Hi everyone.

I have very limited experience programming (and with app development/computers), but when I did study it, it was very intuitive and interesting. I'd like to become good enough to make iPhone apps. The books I bought are really simplistic, but that should be good enough for now.

Here's what I've done so far:

• 1 semester in C++
• Bought Objective-C for Dummies
• Bought iPhone Application Development for Dummies
• Registered as an Apple Developer
• Installed VMWare + Emulated OS X (I only have Windows machines)
• Downloaded iPhone SDK (XCode 4.3)

I started working through the Objective-C book, but it requires Mac OS X (I cannot download the SDK on my PC). I currently only have Windows 7 Machines, so I obtained VMWare in an attempt to emulate Mac OS X. If I eventually have to buy a Mac to publish apps then I'm willing to do that.

The book also appears to be a little bit behind (uses Xcode 3.2 instead of 4.3 and Snow Leopard instead of Lion), but I figured it shouldn't be too much of an issue since programs usually have backwards-compatibility.

Am I on the right track? Thanks for any guidance!

Get a new book. There are a lot of differences, and particularly new features in xcode 4+ that can save you a ton of time.

1) I'm not particularly familiar with C++ but from what I understand it will provide you with little help with iOS programming. Realistically, learning the language is a really small part of it. I'd say learning the iOS frameworks is 80% of it, if not more.
2) Can't speak much on the for dummies books. I would recommend getting the Big Nerd Ranch guides.
3) Registering so soon was probably a mistake. You will have little need to test on a device for a while yet.
4) If you're serious about it, you'll need a mac.

Other than that, I would suggest not getting ahead of yourself. I think nearly all of the people who are new to programming that start with iPhone already have something of an end product in mind. It's important to forget about that completely, and just focus on learning everything you can about UIKit and the other Frameworks (Core Data, etc) until you feel very comfortable with them. Then try to make an app.

Not everyone will share my views... but my advice is NOT to buy books. Books fast get outdated and imo can teach you limited things about programming.

The best way to learn is to practice. Boot up xcode, load the examples and play around with them until you have a good idea how they work. Then decide what feature you would like to add, and use google to find the answers. This is by far the fastest and, in my opinion, best way to learn to code. I went from having zero iOS development knowledge to releasing an app on the app store (allbeit a crappy one) in about 6 weeks. I have a programming background which helped, but I learned everything by looking at example code and using google.

This and youtube is your friend.

I've recently changed jobs but have always been a server side developer / systems developer. My current gig requires me to a do more client side stuff (including iOS and web). I ended up signing up treehouse (formerly Think Vitamin) to get skills for iOS and HTML/CSS levelled up. I can't recommend it enough.

When learning from a book I tend to read and then do the examples/problems or make up a project.

This is a little time consuming, so treehouse is nice in that you're watching someone doing it, making it a lot faster. If you're a total newb it might be harder, but it was just what I needed.

If you're interested, I can send you my referral link that gives you 50% off your first month. I haven't used the 'gold' features of my account, so you can likely get away with/start with a 'silver' account. If you're a student, you can get gold for $9/monthly.

Wow thats amazing, I didn't realize they had a site like this out there. I might sign up just as a refresher course.

I also found another site, they have a youtube channel and do simple tutorials
geeky lemon

I'd be interested.

Anyway, I've wanted to start programming apps for iphones and I realize I will have to get a mac. Any more tips that anyone can give, given my background.

I'm a physics engineer, but I've started directing my courses more towards computers and math. My background in programming is mostly java and C, although I did some beginners stuff a couple of years ago in C++, so I'm not a complete stranger to OOP languages.
The thing is though that I've never really programmed a game or graphical stuff to begin with, basically all program we have done is stuff like, program a matrix multiplication program(not the std one ldo) using the strasser method, parallelize it, make a effective Quicksort algorithm, program a calculator, simulate a galaxy w the barnes-hut algorithm etc, and even if we did some graphics, they were provided so we didn't program them ourselves. So I feel I have a somewhat basic knowledge when it comes to pointers, memory managment etc.

What's the next step? I mean, what does Treehouse go through, is it only videos that you watch or is it written guides.

Purchase Mac,
Sign up for Treehouse,
program app
????
profit.

I'm also interested in learning Objective C. I'm in my freshman year in Computer Science and basically all I've learned in these months was Java (C and C++ will only be taught in the next year). Anyways, we went deep in Java and all it's OOP principles so my question is, what's the expected learning curve for someone like me?

The only book I have is "Programming in Objective C 2.0" (3rd edition, Stephen Kochan).