Professional iPhone® Programming with MonoTouch and .NET/C#

Chapter 14. Just Enough Objective-C

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Looking at Objective-C and Cocoa

• Using an academic approach versus a pragmatic approach

• Learning basic syntax and concepts

• Helpful cheat sheets

MonoTouch is appealing for many reasons. If you're already a .NET developer, the utility is obvious. If you're accustomed to writing managed code (Java, Python, and so on), MonoTouch is a sensible choice regardless of your level of experience with .NET. Whether you're a Java dev, a Python dev, or a VB dev, you're used to working with tools and languages that do a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

As far as object-oriented versions of C go, Objective-C is a fairly simple, straightforward implementation. However, compared to other, more modern C-style languages, Objective-C can seem arcane, verbose, and cumbersome. It isn't a bad language by any means, but there's a reason you chose MonoTouch.

Why, then, is there a chapter on Objective-C in a MonoTouch book? Especially considering that you likely chose MonoTouch in part to avoid learning Objective-C?

It would be nice if those of us who choose MonoTouch over the native dev stack could spend all our time in the comfort of C#, the MonoTouch bindings, and the subset of the .NET Framework it ships with, but the reality is that, the deeper you go with iPhone MonoTouch development, the more likely it is you're going to run up against a question or problem that can only be addressed if you have at least a rudimentary understanding of Objective-C. ...