* Matt Neuburg: REALBasic, The Definitive Guide (there is a 2nd
Edition!)
It is a tragedy, IMO, that their was never a third edition. Even
years out of print, I think that this is the best book for
understanding REALBasic. Particularly for someone who wants to
transition into object oriented programming from old style
programming. I think that it is a brilliant book.
If you cannot find an old print copy, it is still available as an
electronic version.
While REALBasic has advanced a lot since this book was printed, I
still find it the most useful book for me. Incredible to say that
because it was published so long ago.
But I agree that any resource is good. I subscribe to REALbasic
Developer magazine and have looked at or owned the other books.
I also think that the NUG archives are incredibly useful. If
somethings seems hard, then it has probably been discussed in the
past. You just have to understand REALBasic well-enough to formulate
the question or the search. For example, recently there was a huge
discussion about ME vs SELF that I found interesting because I heard
different opinions about the use of these formulations which had
always confused me. I had evolved my own rules and understandings and
after I had these basics under my belt I liked having others
challenge/support my own mental understandings. The NUG, when you
read it real time, washes back and forth between ranting and talking
about technical issues but there is a LOT of good stuff in the
archives. Because of these archives and the people whom I have come
to know on the NUG as people who have interesting things to say and
out of habit, I tend to stay on the NUG rather than on the forums.
There are little gems that people have left around the Web be it
REALbasic university or whatever. I recently needed to learn how to
use REALBasic as an SQL database thing and stuff that I found on the
web was the most useful.
Learning on your own is hard IMO because there is no one around to
guide you away from blind alleys. You can spend SO MUCH time in these
alleys that when I learn a new language I willingly spend $$ to get
lots of books. ANYTHING that saves me some of the wasted time that is
part of learning something on your own is worth it for me. Often just
one or two insights from a book are worth the cost of the thing. They
can save me from hours of pounding my head against some wall that I
have mistaken for a door.
Learning on your own is fascinating because it works at all. You just
start trying to program. Make endless mistakes. And slowly
understanding develops in your brain like a ship emerging from a
mist. Just keep doing and the understanding will take care of itself.
Learning a human language as an infant does works this way.
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