Code Step-by-Step Explanation

Cocoa Programming for OS X (5th Edition) 3. Structures and Classes
1

Hello,

I hope that I don’t look too impatient if I’d say that I’ve reached page 50 in the book, without having the feel that everything is crystal clear in my head. I might look back at this comment after another 200 pages and say to myself “Hmm, you were dumb back then”.

Nevertheless, I’m a bit upset to see that the “Classes” part explains more the physics problems, rather than the programming language itself. This is not a book of math, physics nor chemistry; therefore it shouldn’t spend such a great deal of time treating such details.

For example, we have the following line on page 50:

After the paragraph containing that line, the only given explanation is what “thrust” is…Well, who cares? It could be the magnitude of the rocket’s thrust or it could be the number of gremlins living on Mars. My question is, why do we write: thrust: thrust?
I mean, there should’ve been a line-by-line explanation of the structure of the code, rather than just the physics. I do appreciate that one must clearly understand what problem the software tries to solve, but that shouldn’t be the main purpose of this book.

I might be a bit old fashioned and I’m more used to firs learn “the theory” and then see it in practice. In this book it seems more like I need to reverse engineer the code and figure it out “Why on Earth did they do that?” :confused:

I will continue reading the book, trying out the examples, maybe I’ll get used with this style :slight_smile:

Thanks

2

You will find it much easier to follow the book if you read the manual for Swift Programming Language first.

developer.apple.com/library/ios … g_Language.

3

Thank you! I’m doing that in parallel (I haven’t gone through the entire Swift documentation yet). Nevertheless, I think that my previous comments are still valid: they should’ve explained more the code, rather than the problems solved by the code.
A much easier approach would’ve been something like:

Classes

  • Theory
  • Examples from real world
  • Exercises (at least 4-5 exercises / new concept)
  • Solutions
    etc.

In addition, they could’ve drawn lines, arrows, information bubbles over the code listings, explaining what some lines are trying to achieve (that would’ve made it much more easier to learn for visual people).

Anyway, as I said in my previous comment, I will continue studying through the book and maybe after another 200 pages I will look back at these comments and laugh :smiley: