Moving from C# on Windows to Objective-C on Mac

Question

I'm going to be getting my first Mac computer soon, and I want to learn Objective-C. I already have experience in C#, and I've already started learning C++, but absolutely everything in Objective-C confuses me, including memory management. Do you have any tips on moving from C# to Objective-C? I've read that I should learn C++ before learning Objective-C, but so far C++ looks a lot like C# which looks very different from Objective-C.

Edit: For the people trying to learn from this question, I HIGHLY recommend buying the "Learn Objective-C on the Mac" book by Apress. It's very well written if you're coming from a C-like language (like C, C++, C#, Java, PHP, etc.)

Answer 1

Learn Objective-C directly. No need to learn C++ first. The two are completely different in all aspects that seem to confuse you.

Also understand that for writing functional applications on the Mac, your focus will be more on learning and understanding the Cocoa API than Objective-C itself. Objective-C can be picked up in an afternoon by an experienced programmer. Cocoa takes more time.

For the purpose of learning Cocoa (and Objective-C at the same time), I recommend "Learn Cocoa on the Mac". It's the book most developers on our team used to get started.

If your focus is on iOS development instead, you'll need to learn Cocoa-Touch. I learned it using Beginning iPhone 4 Development, which I can recommend.