2 days.

This fast-paced, two-day intensive will get you off to a quick start coding in Objective-C. There's plenty of lab time to allow you to learn by doing. And our exercises are designed to reinforce key concepts in a way that will help you gain proficiency fast. Between lecture sessions and hands-on labs you'll get a first-hand introduction to fundamentals of the ANSI C programming language, and object-oriented programming with Objective-C classes, objects, methods, instance variables, messages, and more.

You'll also get a peek under the hood, so you'll come away with a more solid understanding of how Objective-C actually works under the covers. These insights will come in handy in a multitude of situations—whether you are trying to learn a new feature of Objective-C, unravel a gnarly problem in the debugger, or design a new component. Beyond that, you'll also learn the best ways to take advantage of many of the powerful, built-in features of the Objective-C language, libraries, and frameworks.

• Review key concepts of ANSI C programming such as pointers and data structures
• Learn to create and use Objective-C objects and classes
• Become familiar with Objective-C's novel approach to object-oriented programming
• Understand dynamic binding and the Objective-C runtime
• Become familiar with Foundation framework classes and APIs

This course will prepare you to take our popular, five-day Introduction to iPhone and iPad Development.

Take this course if you're:

• A professional developer who has a strong background in a C-like language (C, C++, C#, Java, etc.) or has recently taken ANSI C Programming or the equivalent.
• Interested in learning Objective-C and the Foundation Framework to develop code for the Mac OS X or iPhone OS platform

For further insight into which courses would suit you best, please take a look at our guide on iPhone development classes.

Learn from a seasoned developer and teacher.

Jonathan Lehr is the founder and President of About Objects. In over two decades of experience as a software developer and trainer, he has written several books and more than a dozen courses on Objective-C, Cocoa, Java, and other programming topics.

Jonathan first learned Object-Oriented programming on a NeXT workstation he bought in 1991, and he has been sharing his enthusiasm for Objective-C and Cocoa ever since.

Need a machine? Reserve a 20" iMac Today!

Bring your own MacBook or MacBook Pro. Or—if you're attending classes at our headquarters facility in Reston—reserve one of our 20" iMacs with Core Duo processor and 2GB of RAM.

There are also MacBook Pros available at our other locations, but quantities are limited. Please contact our registrar (703-251-4474) to reserve a machine for an upcoming class.

Links

For additional information on Objective-C, please visit:
ADC Reference Library: http://developer.apple.com/referencelibrary/Cocoa/idxObjectiveCLanguage-date.html
Stepwise: http://www.stepwise.com/
Cocoa Dev Central: http://www.cocoadevcentral.com/
Objective-C resource page: http://www.foldr.org/~michaelw/objective-c/

• ANSI C: Review fundamentals of the ANSI C programming language such as pointers, arrays and data structures.
• Xcode: Use Xcode to edit, build, and debug your Objective-C applications, and to manage project resources.
• Objective-C Fundamentals: Learn how to define classes and methods, allocate and deallocate instances, and send messages to objects at runtime.

• Foundation Library: Learn to use essential C functions and Objective-C utility classes for working with numbers, dates, arrays, dictionaries, files and directories, and much more.
• Objective-C 2.0: Learn to use 2.0 features such as garbage collection, dynamic properties, and fast enumeration.
• Memory Management: Learn how to manage memory with retain counts and autorelease pools, and how to avoid memory management pitfalls.
• Advanced Features: Learn to use protocols, categories, key-value coding, invocation forwarding and other advanced features of Objective-C.
• The Objective-C Runtime System: Get an in-depth understanding of the runtime system and how it supports dynamic typing, dynamic binding, messaging, and message forwarding.
• Archives and Serialization: Learn how to serialize and deserialize objects to and from XML and binary formats.
• Working with the Debugger: Learn to use the GNU debugger (gdb) interactively to help track down and and fix bugs.