This week I picked up a book from Amazon called “Beginning iPhone Development – Exploring the iPhone SDK” by Dave Mark and Jeff LaMarche. Given that iPhone development is a relatively new area of programming (the AppStore has only been around for about 7 months) the book is quite an impressive guide to developing applications on the iPhone.
While I haven’t exactly created any earth shattering applications as yet (Hello World is about as interesting as it gets) I do have some ideas for at least one application that I want to write and after doing a couple of tutorials online I decided that buying a book would probably help me to get down and dirty more quickly.
My Hello World app icon
The book covers just about everything you need to know and do in order to get started with writing iPhone applications (note: a fundamental grasp of programming is assumed), including downloading the SDK (a pretty sizable download as it includes the XCode IDE) and signing up for Apple’s iPhone Developer program (a process I’m going through at the moment).
Once you’ve got the SDK installed, writing your first application is quite easy. Interface Builder (the visual IDE which is used alongside XCode) makes it extremely simple to add graphics to your application (whether for the menu icon or in your app itself) and takes a lot of the hard work out of doing the basics.
My Hello World app
While you can sign up for and download the SDK for free, in order to get your applications on to your iPhone you’ll have to enrol for the subscription based Apple iPhone Developer program (expect to spend at least $99 on this). Though as Mark and LaMarche point out this is not a significant cost when you consider that you’re not paying anything for the IDE itself (compare it to buying Microsoft Visual Studio for example). Once you start working with the SDK itself, most programmers will be blown away by the features and tools which are available to you. Things you don’t get in most development environments (certainly not Microsoft’s anywyay), such as the ability to view the assembly code for your underlying application with the click of a menu.
Given how easy Apple have made it to write applications for the iPhone I’m not surprised that we’re seeing so many people interested in this space. The one recommendation I would make to you as an aspiring iPhone developer is to approach the process with a guide (i.e. a book like “Beginning iPhone development”) as it makes the journey a whole lot smoother, especially if you’re coming from a completely different programming paradigm (or platform).
For a more detailed review of the book check out this Slashdot article.