Red Hat Diaries/0040

Bricknell

In contrast to the grossly image-drenched Aaron Hillegass, KJ Bricknell is the salt of the earth. For less than the dude with the hat wants, KJ offers a book of over four times the size loaded with what developers really need. And what's even better is that the book is also available for free - in HTML format online, or downloadable as one big file.

http://mactech.com/macintosh-c

And big it is - at 1600 pages this book - a SAMS publication for once not set with huge typefaces to up the number of pages and the size of the volume - is chock full of information, and presented in a way reminiscent of programming courses - something totally alien to the rinky-dinky world of the Big Nerd. For every tutorial, for every mention of an API, KJ lists related APIs so you get a good overview of what's going on - in contrast to the way Hillegass simply says 'oh yeah you can use this selector too.'

Where Hillegass doesn't even mention the file system - so you might believe the Mac doesn't even use one - KJ takes the time to explain just how this file system works, what the data fork is, what the resource fork is, what has been stored in which fork through the ages, what the current modus operandi is, and so forth and so on. The only thing KJ doesn't cover are FreeBSD primitives such as multitasking and process and memory management. In all other respects, KJ's book is something of an OS X bible - much more so, for example, than the incredibly lame and inaccurate volumes from Petzold for the Windows environment.

In contrast to the repulsively narcissistic Hillegass - who seems totally in love with himself - KJ seems instead fairly taken by his subject matter - what you want in a tutor - and a fairly nice guy. And KJ is an Aussie, something which can only add to his esteem.

Learning a new operating system and a new programming environment - especially one as hybrid and potentially confusing as this one - can still be an uphill climb, but at least some information is available.

And the reader is not asked to shell out $3500 to get past inaccuracies in a sloppily written book.

Click here »