Useful Cocoa and Cocoa Touch Links

Description

Part of the challenge new Cocoa and Cocoa Touch programmers face is finding good introductory and reference material.

I've compiled a list of links to the most important material and published it in business-card form. I distribute these cards at events where Cocoa and Cocoa Touch programmers, particularly new ones, are likely to gather, such as at NSCoderNight and CocoaHeads.

You are welcome to distribute these cards at relevant events you attend; just please leave them unmodified and print both sides, so people who pick them up know who made them and can return to this page for updates.

PDF versions are below.

I've been printing them myself on store-brand perforated business-card sheets from Target. This has worked well so far. If you do print them yourself, make sure you print them at 100% scale, not shrunk-to-fit or scaled-up-to-fill-the-paper. The 10-up PDF below is already sized perfectly for US Letter paper; scaling up or down is unnecessary and will throw the sizing and placement off.

The links

Since this page doesn't have the space constraints of the actual card, the links in this list are the full, non-shortened versions.

Concepts (Objective-C side):

• Apple documentation: Object-Oriented Programming with Objective-C, a description of object-oriented programming from the Objective-C viewpoint
• Apple documentation: Programming with Objective-C, a more detailed document of the Objective-C language
• Apple documentation: The Cocoa Fundamentals Guide
• Apple documentation: Cocoa Core Competencies
• Apple documentation: Cocoa [Touch] Application Competencies for iOS
• Apple: WWDC 2010 session videos (requires ADC account to view content, but is otherwise free)
• Apple: WWDC 2011 session videos (requires ADC account to download videos and PDFs, but is otherwise free)
• Apple: WWDC 2012 session videos (requires ADC account to download videos and PDFs, but is otherwise free)
• Apple: WWDC 2013 session videos (no account required)
• Apple: WWDC 2014 session videos (no account required)

Concepts (Swift side):

• Apple documentation: The Swift Programming Language
• Apple documentation: The Swift Standard Library Reference, documenting the types, protocols, and functions that are built into the language
• Apple documentation: Using Swift with Cocoa and Objective-C, covering how to use the Cocoa frameworks and other Objective-C modules from Swift code (and use Swift modules from Objective-C code)
• Apple documentation: The Swift Programming Series on iBooks, which includes both “The Swift Programming Language” and “Using Swift with Cocoa and Objective-C”
• Apple: WWDC 2014 session videos

Tools:

• Apple documentation: Xcode Concepts
• Apple documentation: Xcode Overview (successor to Xcode 4 User Guide)
• Apple documentation: Xcode Keyboard Shortcuts and Gestures
• Apple documentation: Mac OS X Debugging Magic
• Apple documentation: iOS Debugging Magic
• Apple resource: Apple's Developer Downloads site, which includes versions current and old of Xcode and various other tools (including the Graphics Tools, Hardware Tools, etc.)
• (Objective-C side only) An Xcode configuration file that enables a thick stack of warnings and the static analyzer so that Clang, Xcode's compiler, will catch bugs for you

Need help?

• Apple: Apple's online documentation search
• Google
• Stack Overflow, a programming question-and-answer site
• Apple: Apple's Developer Forums (requires ADC account, but is otherwise free)—this is the only correct place to ask questions about OS versions, frameworks, and tools that Apple hasn't released to the public yet

Previous links

These links are still valid, but have been removed from the card in preference to other resources.

• Cocoa and Objective-C: Up and Running, a book by Scott Stevenson (pre-ARC)
• This year's WWDC videos (absent from the card whenever a specific-year link works)
• My introduction to Cocoa and Cocoa Touch, which clarifies some unclear aspects, addresses some misconceptions, and provides links to many important parts of Apple's documentation (and puts some people off due to its tone)
• My blog post about warnings, since the Warnings.xcconfig file and its documentation now give more complete coverage

Downloads

Cocoa-links-business-card-single.pdf

A PDF of a single card.
MD5 hash: 74671ec56d7f69e62c2df370d66320ed
SHA-1 hash: 3a2d2f67d9d427559706a206dec69edca70c82c5

Cocoa-links-business-card.pdf

A PDF of ten of the cards, suitable to be printed on and cut out from a single US Letter page.
MD5 hash: 7959ed74be3a9459251162c9e9f2152a
SHA-1 hash: f5957e9b699640a5a42c824db80b7a11343adeb1

MD5 and SHA1 digests were created using EasyHash.

Version history

1.4 (2015-04-19)

• Removed “Learning Objective-C: A Primer”, because it's now just a redirect to “Programming with Objective-C”.
• Updated the WWDC link range to include 2014.
• Switched from my old blog post about warnings to my repository for a Warnings.xcconfig file.
• Switched from my old blog post about ADC search to ADC's new search site.
• Replaced the back side of the card with a Swift side.

1.3 (2013-10-21)

• Switched link shortening from notlong.com, which seemingly no longer accepts new entries, to j.mp (Bitly).
• Added “Learning Objective-C: A Primer”.
• Updated the WWDC link range to include 2013. (A previous version, circa WWDC 2013, had added a separate link for those videos, but now the same links that work for 2010–2012 also accept 2013 and redirect to the separate link.)
• Replaced the Xcode 4 User Guide with three other Xcode documents: Xcode Concepts, Xcode Overview, and Xcode Gestures and Keyboard Shortcuts Guide.
• Updated the Developer Forums link: it no longer requires a paid membership. Also clarified that it's the only correct place to ask about NDA'd matters.

1.2.1 (2013-08-27)

• Removed link to Scott Stevenson's book. This card no longer links to anything pre-ARC.
• Added link to WWDC 2013 videos.
• Replaced connect.apple.com with updated Apple Developer Downloads link.

1.2 (2013-03-01)

• Long overdue update that includes lots of changes that I thought I'd published but apparently hadn't. Sorry about that.
• Replaced the late “Objective-C Programming Language” document (RIP) with its successor, “Programming with Objective-C”.
• Added Cocoa Core Competencies and Cocoa [Touch] Application Competencies for iOS.
• Updated the WWDC link range to include 2012.
• Added the Xcode 4 User Guide.
• Added connect.apple.com.
• Added the Developer Forums.

1.1.2 (2011-10-27)

• Added Learning Objective-C: A Primer.

1.1.1 (2011-08-16)

• Updated to include the WWDC 2011 videos link.

1.1 (2011-03-15)

• Created this web page and linked to it on the back of the card.
• Switched to vertical orientation.
• Added iOS Debugging Magic.
• Added my blog post about Apple's online documentation search.

1.0.1 (sometime before November 2010)

• I forgot what I changed in this version, but it was pretty minor.

1.0 (sometime in mid 2010)

• Initial version.

2013-10-21 http://boredzo.org/cocoa-links-card