Cocoa® Programming for Mac OS® X For Dummies®

Chapter 2. Creating Your First Cocoa Application

In This Chapter

• Attaining fame and fortune with Cocoa in six easy steps

• Creating a project

• Building your interface

• Adding code to the project

• Testing and building a completed application

Programming computers can be grueling. Apple tries to simplify that task by offering a complete set of tools, an easy-to-understand programming language, and a sophisticated object-oriented framework to help you produce great software. The complete package is so well honed that you can create an application in one sitting with only a small amount of code.

This chapter shows you how to create your first Cocoa application from scratch with Apple's Xcode Developer Tools. Whether you're building an interface, adding code to make the interface functional, or building the finished product, the Apple Xcode Developer Tools offer a professional development environment that lets you work quickly to produce amazing applications.

Creating a Cocoa Application in Six Simple Steps

Writing your own software is a process. Much like following a recipe, you proceed through a sequence of steps until you end up with a working application. Here's the six-step process to creating a Cocoa application:

1. Think of an application.

   For some people, this can be the toughest step in the programming process. For others, it's the simplest. Consider a task that you want your computer to perform. Then think of a computer program that would do it. What would the program look like? How would it ...