On: Ask HN: What do you think of Objective-C?

[derefr]

You know, I always wondered why they don't have, as contrasted with the "For Dummies" series, "Yet Another Language: Foo" books: books that assume you already know every language but this one, are already down on all the theory behind the language, and just want to know the syntactic, library-usage, and perhaps semantic (for example, macros in Lisp) transforms to take the code you already know how to write and retool it.

The flagship books of the series would be for Java and PHP, marketed to people that otherwise abhor those languages, but have to whip them out for the requirements of a specific project.

[tocomment → derefr]

Don't forget idioms, such a book should also include programming idioms, so you don't end up writing Java code in Python, etc.

[friism → derefr]

For C# and Java, I can recommend Peter Sestofts Precisely books. They're short and to the point: http://www.itu.dk/~sestoft/javaprecisely/ http://www.itu.dk/~sestoft/csharpprecisely/ (Author is my thesis advisor, so beware)

[potatolicious → derefr]

I think there are some website guides out there (Google for 'em) that do a good job of introducing Obj-C to C++ coders.

[sqs → derefr]

That's an excellent idea. Why don't you start writing them? I'll be your first customer.