catacomber.com : : ride the light

Register as a developer. It's free. Of course I paid the $99 bucks and went through the official process.

Under the free system you can still test anything using the simulator.

If you are a licensed developer (paid), the first thing you should do is get a signing certificate so you can actually test the programs you are making or learning to make on a real iphone or ipod or ipad rather than just on the simulator. It's really not the same thing. The simulator can't do all the things a real device can do.

Was absolutely thrilled to see my little program, Hello Zarista with a beautiful flower interface show up on my ipod when I first got started. : )

Apple has done everything they can to make the user pleased with what they see. I am truly amazed by how easy it is to make a nice looking view.

A good book to use to learn the basics including getting a signing certificate without tears is Sam's Learn Iphone Programming in 24 Hours.

Of course, I am not suggesting you stay up 24 hours to learn it in one sitting. : ) It's meant to be spread out over 24 hours when you are wide awake.

The NS prefix in a lot of the code goes back to NextStep which was Steve Job's baby. : )

I've been SO tempted to stick my toe in the water and try making a program... what software do you use to code/run/compile your program?

I use mac computer and free xcode software from Apple, the last to the latest version. Haven't downloaded the latest version yet because it's such a long download and Apple has a new version so often. : )

Xcode with its interface builder software is just like the iphone--geared to be user friendly and to make the most beautiful product anyone could wish to have. What surprised me at first is that so many things are drag and drop. It's like using a game editor to a certain extent.

You can view the properties of all your "objects" in the inspector. It's a very familiar tool to me.

Am going to upgrade to Snow Leopard.

The code (Objective C) is a lot like other programming languages am familiar with but the extension is .m. And it is rife with NS prefixes. The NS prefixes can be a little confusing to someone used to C or C++ but you get used to it.

Just think of Nessy, the Loch Ness Monster and you can get used to it. : )

As in NSObject, NSLog, etc. you get used to it.

Statements end nicely in a ;

But--there is something new--bracket coding.

Not to worry. It means special coding that an object is sending a message. : ) For example a rectangle is telling the program to draw itself in a certain way.

The message can be the same for a rectangle or for a square but the rectangle knows what to do with it in a way different than the square.

Same message but utilized by different objects in a different way. Polymorphism. : )

I can see this is not going to be a popular thread but I want to continue it anyway because I think learning to program the iphone/ipod/ipad from scratch is very satisfying. And the programming language that the iphone etc. uses is not that different from other object-oriented programming languages--it just prefixes certain things with NS. : ) Once you get beyond that--and get used to using interface builder it's not so bad.

Lol thats pretty sweet... have fun learning all the coding
Can't wait till your first game comes out

The coding isn't that different from what I'm used to. : ) Objective C is an expansion of C. It takes C to the level of being object oriented--the same way C++ does. But it's a separate and distinct language from C++ so there are some new things, like bracket coding. The key is to work with the small amount of memory iphone has.

It's how to work interface builder that I'm really learning. Then how to incorporate the different frameworks.

Have fun with that... I'm still trying to figure out how to use UDK game maker... watched the tutorials (all 100) but its still so hard!

My first effort that does something---

It's a tiny program that searches a website randomly for a flower that is the same color as your color choice and displays the picture. I couldn't get it to work the first time I set it up in interface builder--but then made the connections again and it works. : )

I know this isn't game programming but I want to understand how any program is built and structured not only on iphone/ipod/ipad but also on mac.

It's my little vacation. : )

NSObject by the way is the superclass of objects in Objective C programming. It's the Adam and Eve of objects. : ) So it says everything. You could probably make your own but why reinvent what doesn't need reinventing?

What's an object? It's like your hand. Your hand is an object with its superclass of body.

Your hand has instance variables like thumb, forefinger, middlefinger, pinkie.

It also has methods. Like scratch, point, clutch, take, give.

That's object oriented programming. : ) So you define objects and their instance variables and methods and then you go into interface builder and become a wizard of creation. : )

And the wonder of methods is that they don't have to belong to just one object -- they can be shared among many objects. F.e., you can scratch with your toe or elbow, etc. : ) So one method can be used by many objects saving you work of having to make more code to do the same thing for different objects.

If it sounds crazy, blame the wizards. : ) But it works really well.

Do you have raw memory pointers and do you have to track cleaning them up like in C or is there some sort of automatic memory garbage disposal like Java and .Net?

There is no garbage collection as is available for mac programs. There is a way to track the variables you use that are no longer needed and dispose of them MANUALLLY--UGH--and that's crucial to dealing with memory on iphone. In Mac this is not a problem--Mac has garbage collection. I'm just getting there have only touched the surface but I know this is a big thing. A very big thing on iphone. I imagine it's not such a big thing on ipad but am concentrating on iphone/ipod right now.

Have just stuck a toe in that water.

But my fingers are playing with all the stuff you can add to your interface. : )

In the latest version of Xcode that is Snow Leopard there is a way to track memory leaks on iphone in Xcode but you still have to be aware of where you allocated memory if you did it in a certain way and you still might be responsible for sending it to the great Memory graveyard in your program. I am just upgrading to Snow Leopard.

The hardest thing about making a good iphone program seems to be about managing memory.

That's a plus! Of course if your program crashes cause you didn't manage your memory in the right way, that's essentially going to programmer's hell. So you want to manage your memory the right way from the get go. And not wait until you have a big sprawling program and you have to go back and find all your problems.

As I've learned in the past few days, memory management is everything on iphone/ipod and it has to be done in a certain way. This seems to be the greatest pitfall. Don't know if ipad falls into this problem or not. I think it should have garbage collection but don't know yet. I know its memory footprint is a whole lot greater--a whole, whole lot. : )

I've been looking at all the game editors available for iphone. I still think the best way to go is to learn real raw apple programming and then--if you can't do what you want to do--to use one of the editors. But I want to make a basic apple program first so am not yet worried about anything else and am not touching the editors. Am only working with xcode, interface builder and objective c. : )

Found out that Steve Jobs was originally a graphics person (Pixar should ring a bell) which helps me understand why Apple so beautifully pays attention to designing a delightful graphics presentation. They really went all out on this and they make it so easy to do it in xcode and interface builder and with open gl which I have a long way to go to get into but hope to get there. They have an easier way to handle graphics which I'll start with and then hope to work my way up.

Our first app is probably not going to be a game but a program of another kind. : )

Steve Jobs is expected to make an announcement today about various new things--

"Apple is widely expected to introduce the new iPhone at the WWDC 2010 Keynote on Monday, June 7th. The keynote begins at 10 a.m. Pacific."

Hopefully someone somewhere will have a feed into what it is all about. Someone mentioned an update to Safari.....updates are wonderful but killing me with their two hour downloads......on high-speed internet-- : )

It looks like iphone 4.0 will be great. But.......

news for developers...if you don't code your game in objective c or c or c++, your app will get rejected from the appstore.

Thanking the Snow Leopards that am learning to code in Objective C and not using an editor written in another language although cocos2d is written in objective c and am going to do a little parallel learning now. : )

I just did the long, long 2 hour or so download of xcode for snow leopard and it's in and it works out of the box. Now to transfer my signing certificate stuffies and download cocos2d. : ) And integrate it. : ) Of all the pricey editors for iphone out there, cocos2d is probably the most compliant with the new guidelines for iphone 4.0 cause it's written in--tada--objective c and it's free.

As my favorite monkey, Curious George, would say, ah, hah, ah, hah! Which means let's do it. : )

Downloaded cocos2d for iphone and installed like a charm after half hour of head scratching over instructions. Guess what--my trusty mac helped me--I swear my Snowleopard (Snowy) is alive--it gave me hints to help me get the cocos2d stuff copied over into my mac's pristine xcode files.

Anyway, now I have some great looking cocos2d templates to make hopefully great looking cocos2d- based -- programs for iphone. I think the templates can be used to make more than just games as well as games, so experimenting.

I should mention again that cocos2d is free. : ) Some of my best experiences have been with free software, like apple's xcode. : )

Not all programs work with snowleopard--there's a list of those that do and don't and are questionable ---- . If you have a mac with snowleopard installed, it's good to check the list.
http://snowleopard.wikidot.com/

Oh wow! That would be sooooo cool to learn how to do! I'm starting to think about taking a classor two if I could find a little time at the community college near me. My father learned all the different computer programming (now retired) and my brother (along with my father) know how to build a computer from scratch, my sister is a web master, and I'm a chef. Go figure. I probably would be in computers if I didn't get married at a young age and started a family.

I think being a chef is a great calling. But if you're around people who do programming it has to rub off. : ) I just enjoy it.

A downside of the new xcode version from apple is that you can't test on an ipod anymore--iphone, yes, ipad, yes and in simulator but my ipod--Podeen--is sobbing softly. I hope this changes. I can test however on the simulator and I guess this is motivation to get an ipad at some point this year.

If my body was object-oriented, I'd like to redefine the "properties" of certain "members"

One neat way of reducing the memory footprint of your applications is to divide it into self-contained bite-sized portions; that way you can easily keep tabs on the variables each portion uses and free them appropriately, as well as making it easier to debug your application later on. This is called "structured" programming.

I don't know what Apple calls these code-portions, but in the C world they are known as subroutines.

Subroutines are useful for tasks that are to be done repeatedly; and in this case is useful for keeping the memory overhead low.

For example, when you substitute a task that takes 10 steps to complete with a subroutine that does the same, and you have 20 different places in your main code that needs to do the exact same task, in each of the places where you need to do the task, just "call" the subroutine and you save 9 steps * 20 = 180 steps of code (try converting that to bytes; 180 * 4 bytes per step = you would effectively save 720 bytes of memory)

Congratulations on taking the first steps into programming. I started out I was 13 and I'm still going; it's spicy

Apple has these subroutines--objective c is heavily built on c and they encourage this type of programming.

I could use "editors" for iphone programming but have decided to stay strictly with apple's sdk. It is so gorgeous, speaking of objects. : ) And it is spicy. It's harder to use the sdk rather than going with an editor like cocos 2d or oolong or unity, but the result is that one learns more and quite fast. : )