I’ve tried to make myself learn a programming language before. When Mac OS X was released, I wanted to learn Cocoa/ObjC. Everything I read at the time suggested that one should start by first learning C… I tried a few...

That really depends on who you are and how your brain is structured. Not everyone learns in the same way (and I'm not even talking about true mental disabilities). Most tutorial books on programming seem to be geared towards one type of brain. The "Head First" series from a O'Reilly is the first true departure I've seen from this rut in a while.

K&R is what a lot of people recommend, but it's about as stimulating as dirt. There really are other good books on C out there. I feel too many people suggest this one as a knee-jerk reaction. I also like O'Reilly Practical C Programming -- it does a great job of teaching sticky concepts like pointers in a very straightforward and much more visual manner than K&R. Simple C is the best book I've found for the absolute beginner -- uses the type of language most humans are used to hearing.

In terms of learning Cocoa, see this page at CocoaDevCentral.

And that's about the fifth time I've pointed people at that page in the last two days.

- Scott

So, in conclusion, we take OO concepts for granted, but they're not so easy for some people.

As for the post, I also suggest the K&R book. It's pretty much the best book there is. The things to really know are the concepts, because C is very simple language syntax wise. if clauses, when and for loops, recursion, iteration...with those concepts, and a guide to syntax, you can pretty much learn any functional language. given a couple more (albeit significantly tougher in comparison) concepts, OO isn't that far either.

I picked it up as a reference book for class my sophmore year of college and rarely cracked it open. I started an internship after that school year and my employer told me to read it cover-to-cover. Made a world of difference.

I would reccommend staying away from anything that's dumbed down though. Learning to program isn't that hard, and not being told the full picture creates more fear then it dispels.

Learning "enough" C is quite easy and can be done in the course of a weekend. Heck, just read the K&R book. It's only like 90 pages last time I checked. I've read longer slashdot threads.

Seriously though, if you can get even the basics of the K&R book down you will have MORE than enough under your belt to start doing some fairly complex stuff in Cocoa. As an artist with no real formal CS background (other than a useless Pascal course in college) I can say that even idiots can do it if they set their mind to it. Ya' just gotta dig in and not let things get you down when you don't understand pointers and handles the first time.