Chapter 1

Welcome Aboard

welcome! Chances are, you are reading this because you love the Mac. And not only do you love the Mac, but you also love the idea of learning how to design and develop your very own Mac programs.

You've definitely come to the right place.

This book assumes that you know how to use your Mac. That's it. You don't need to know anything about programming, not one little bit. We'll start off with the basics, and each step we take will be a small one to make sure that you have no problem following along.

This book will focus on the basics of programming. At the same time, you'll learn C, one of the most widely used programming languages in the world. And once you know C, you'll have a leg up on learning programming languages like Objective-C, C++, and Java—all of which are based on C. If you are going to write code these days, odds are good you'll be writing it in one of these languages.