Beginning Mac Programming: Develop with Objective-C and Cocoa

Beginning Mac Programming: Develop with Objective-C and Cocoa

by Tim Isted

You already know the reasons to get into Mac programming: millions of users rely on the Mac as their primary operating system. If you are searching for a new job, acquiring a skill set, or simply inspired to develop software for the Mac, Beginning Mac Programming is the practical and straightforward introduction to the basics you need to create innovative applications that people will seek out, discuss, and rely on. Beginners welcome!

Audience: this book is aimed at folks without any previous experience programming. For a book aimed at experienced programmers, please see Cocoa Programming: a Quickstart Guide.
Cocoa Programming: A Quick-Start Guide for Developers

Cocoa Programming: A Quick-Start Guide for Developers

by Daniel H Steinberg

Apple’s Cocoa frameworks let you write powerful and attractive applications for Mac OS X or the iPhone. With this book plus your existing knowledge of object-oriented programming you can take advantage of Cocoa and create compelling, feature rich, compliant Mac applications for this industry-leading environment.

  • If you need a jump start using Xcode (the IDE used for Mac OS X programming), have a look at Mike Clark’s two-part screencast series.

Audience: this book is aimed at experienced programmers who are new to Cocoa and the Mac. For an entry level book, please see Beginning Mac Programming
ExpressionEngine 2.0: A Quick-Start Guide

ExpressionEngine 2.0: A Quick-Start Guide

by Ryan Irelan

Whether you’re building a small site or a large corporate undertaking, ExpressionEngine is becoming the tool of choice. With this Quick-Start Guide, you’ll get hands-on experience with ExpressionEngine 2.0 by building a complete web site from start to finish. You’ll learn techniques and best practices for customizing and optimizing your sites, including working with new ExpressionEngine 2.0 features, templates, and site search.
SQL Antipatterns: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Database Programming

SQL Antipatterns: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Database Programming

by Bill Karwin

If you’re programming applications that store data, then chances are you’re using SQL, either directly or through a mapping layer. Well, here’s a sad secret – most developers aren’t SQL experts, and most of the SQL that gets used is inefficient, hard to maintain, and sometimes just plain wrong. Why learn all this the hard way? This book shows you all the common mistakes, and then leads you through the best fixes. What’s more, it shows you what’s behind these fixes, so you’ll learn a lot about relational databases along the way.
The RSpec Book: Behaviour Driven Development with RSpec, Cucumber, and Friends

The RSpec Book: Behaviour Driven Development with RSpec, Cucumber, and Friends

by David Chelimsky, Dave Astels, Zach Dennis, Aslak Hellesøy, Bryan Helmkamp, Dan North

Is your team trying to do TDD and failing? Are you finding your test suites bloated and difficult to read, understand, or maintain? Business applications today are plagued with features that are never used, highly coupled code that is hard to change, and expensive test suites that aren’t run any more because they are brittle and unreadable.

RSpec, Ruby’s leading Behaviour Driven Development tool, helps you do TDD right by embracing the design and documentation aspects of TDD. It encourages readable, maintainable suites of code examples that not only test your code, they document it as well. The RSpec Book will teach you how to use RSpec, Cucumber, and other Ruby tools to develop truly agile software that gets you to market quickly and maintains its value as evolving market trends drive new requirements.