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iOS

Objective-C course is terrible...

I'm sorry but I feel I really have to raise the issue I have with the iOS Objective-C track. It's very confusing when the teacher is using keyboard short cuts without even telling you and introducing concepts without first explaining what they're for i.e. setters and getters.

I'm referring here to the video on the Objective-C course titled 'From Structs to Objects'.

I will be taking up the suggestions made by some of the students on this thread - to which I have also made some of my own suggestions:

https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/very-confusing

I'll be taking a course else where to get my self up to speed with Objective-C and hopefully come back.

Mike

4 Answers

I agree Douglass Turner goes through a lot of shortcut keys so if you aren't paying attention you will be in the wrong file, he switches between the .h and .m files constantly without saying anything and glosses over the fact many of the students have no background on what he is speaking his topic on. It does make a little more sense later on, but would have been nice to understand it at this stage.

Thanks Jeremy - to any one else feeling frustrated with the Objective-C course, I would recommend the Objective-C book 'The Big Nerd Ranch Guide' it's excellent at explaining concepts in plain English.

remains to be seen. There are Swift apps being made, but the next couple years you will still be fairly safe knowing Objective-C, knowing Objective-C will never hurt in the long run. You will learn many languages of programming throughout your career if you go into development in the future.

Alamuddin Bakhit
Alamuddin Bakhit
1,355 Points

Thanks for the advice, I'll try my best to learn both, for present and future!

Swift doesn't solve the problem, you will need to learn Objective-C if you plan on creating apps. Here's some great examples why..

http://www.bignerdranch.com/blog/ios-developers-need-to-know-objective-c/

You can’t do everything in Swift. For example, if you want to use a library of C++ code in your application, you will need to talk to the C++ objects from Objective-C. Swift can call C functions, but I believe that if you are working with a lot of C functions and types, you will want to code in Objective-C.

The community talks in Objective-C. There are thousands of useful Objective-C snippets on StackOverflow and iOS dev blogs everywhere. Objective-C is the language we have used for the last six years to describe to each other how the Cocoa Touch libraries work. If you can’t read Objective-C, you won’t be able to understand this trove of knowledge.

The frameworks are written Objective-C. When you have a bug, it often doesn’t rear its ugly head until execution is deep in Apple’s code. If you want to understand what the debugger is telling you, you will need to understand Objective-C.

Objective-C is stable and well-tested. Swift looks great, but the language is evolving and the compiler is immature. If I were making a significant bet on developing an app this year, I would still use Objective-C.

Alamuddin Bakhit
Alamuddin Bakhit
1,355 Points

Wow!

I never know this, thanks!

I'm still new to programming, I haven't created an app yet, but I'm looking forward to it soon, it seems like what you're saying is "Swift isn't bad but not yet mature" do you know when will it hit it's maturity or if it will ever be?

Caleb Kleveter
MOD
Caleb Kleveter
Treehouse Moderator 37,862 Points

I understand, but it will make more sense when you do primitive data types.

Ok thanks, I'm going to give it another shot, hissy fit over...

It's just frustrating because when you look at the other courses on line they explain what an Object is and what an instance of a class is and how the two terms 'object' and 'instance' are inter changeable.

This Student sums up the feeling I have about this here;

https://teamtreehouse.com/forum/wrong-start-to-introduce-objectivec