Objective c - anything like c?

Question

Basically I want to try and develop a basic iPhone app. I have 2 - 3 years experience in Java, and am currently studying C now - have done pointers memory management, etc. but very briefly.

Is Objective C going to deviate too much from the C that I have learnt so far, so it will be like learning a brand new language? Or should I be able to use what I have learnt thus far?

Also, what is the best IDE to do this in, currently for c i use dev-c++ - i read that it is possible to develop i phone apps using objective c in this ide but was wondering if there wwere a better option available. Possiblly netbeans :D

Answer 1

Objective-C is a strict superset of C, so anything that compiles under a C compiler will also compile in your Objective-C compiler.

Essentially Objective-C turns C into an OOP by adding small-talk style messaging to allow communication between objects.

To answer the additional part of your question, XCode is the Apple recomended IDE, and I beleive the only official way to build iPhone apps.

Answer 2

It's very close to C as really it just adds an OOPS layer over the top of normal C. As someone was very familiar with C but never used C++ extensively enough to feel totally at home with it I find I really quite like coding in it.

The syntax is a little odd compared to C++ which does take a bit of getting used to, but once over that hurdle then there's nothing much which will cause you any pain, and a lot of gain.

Of course most of the challenge is not actually learning Objective-C, but coming up to speed with the cocoa API