On 3 Oct, 2009, at 18:07, Sherm Pendley wrote:
On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 11:14 AM, Colin Howarth <[email protected]>
wrote:
WARNING! Do not even ATTEMPT the NSPersistentDocument Core Data
Tutorial!
Your very MIND is in MORTAL DANDER!
Overreact much? We're talking about technical documentation, not an
H.P. Lovecraft novel. Cocoa bindings are a prerequisite for learning
Core Data, so you should learn that first. This is no different than
needing to learn algebra before attempting calculus. If you try it the
other way around, you'll waste a lot of time and probably end up
confused - not the best result, but a far cry from "mortal danger."
I didn't _really_ think that I was in mortal danger, and H.P.Lovecraft
isn't
scary at all.
What part of "... should not simply try to read [it] straight through
..." implies that you shouldn't read it at all? You need to do the
exercises, maybe backtrack a little (or a lot) to review material you
didn't quite get the first time through, etc.
I know, I know...
Apple is simply saying that the guide is a technical tutorial, not the
latest John Grisham novel!
Ah, but I don't read John Grisham novels. I read technical docs for
fun and
relaxation. Usually they're precise, concise and clear.
To be honest, I find Apple's documentation to be -- unhelpful -- at
the best
of times...
It'd be far more helpful if you skipped all the melodrama. It's not
"warning" you of "mortal danger," it's just describing the
prerequisites to learning about Core Data.
And finally, how do Apple manage to make load: save: undo: sound more
intimidating than quantum interference?
It's no more intimidating than a college catalog that says "you must
complete FOO101 before you can take BAR220."
OK, skipping the melodrama, there's something wrong with the Apple
documentation,
but I can't quite put my finger on it.
The Perl man pages on nested data structures, say a dictionary
containing arrays containing
other dictionaries which are actually representing objects, I find
perfectly clear, for example.
And I did the first time I read it.
Take the Key-Value Coding Programming Guide which describes the
NSKeyValueCoding informal protocol which
defines a mechanism allowing applications to access the properties of
an object indirectly
by name (or key), rather than directly through invocation of an
accessor method or as instance variables.
Translation: You'll find lots of useful things can happen if you
access your instance variables
(e.g. the variable bar of the instance foo) like this: baz =
foo.bar; foo.bar = baz; which is just
shorthand for baz = [foo bar]; and [foo setBar: baz]; . Other parts of
your code can access bar simply
by knowing the string @"bar".
Actually, that's not a translation, it's more or less (less rather
than more, I admit) the entire Key-Value
Coding Programming Guide. At least, it's enough to get you going.
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