Updated C Tutorial for Cocoa

Another step in revamping Cocoa Dev Central. The C Language Tutorial for Cocoa has been completely stripped down, streamlined, redesigned and rewritten. The look is in inline with the new home page, but that's just the beginning.

The earlier version of this tutorial was, I think, one of the easiest ways to get started in C programming, particularly if your main reason for learning C was to learn Cocoa. This new version is even easier to read. I chopped out all sorts of unnecessary ramblings and left the essentials: the code and the basic explanations for that code. The design is just as stripped down.

I realize this technically isn't new content, but the idea is to give the new design a test run on an existing tutorial first to work out all the details. There is a new tutorial in progress.

Something Else is Different

For a long time, I wanted Cocoa Dev Central to just be 100% free. No ads, no donations. Nothing. Three things occurred to me, though:

1. Doing really great tutorials takes time
2. People want new tutorials frequently
3. Frequent new tutorials is hard to do if they don't pay

Maybe it seems obvious that great tutorials take time, but let me explain what that means to me.

What Goes Into a Tutorial?

The Build a Core Data app tutorial is very popular. I think it's very easy to read and follow, but it does take some time to read and go through. In fact, it takes quite a while. Now, if it takes a while to read, think about how much time it took to make.

Out of everything I've done, technical writing takes absolutely the most concentration. For any block of text, I'm asking myself a number of questions:

- Is this correct?
- Does it make sense to the reader?
- Does it fit into the overall tutorial structure?
- Does it fully cover the concept in question?
- Is this concept too advanced (or too remedial)?
- Is it as simple as it can be?

That last one is the hardest, by far. It's easy to just write and write. It's hard to strip it all down to the shortest, plainest language possible. I think that's what Cocoa Dev Central stands for, though.

That's just the writing side. Most tutorials need a sample application. That means coming up with an app, designing the UI and data model, and writing the code. The Core Data tutorial also has many, many screenshots and diagrams which were painstakingly crafted to highlight only the important areas.

It's Worth It, But...

Now, I wouldn't do this if I didn't think it was all worthwhile and interesting. I also think all this effort has paid off because the Cocoa Dev Central tutorials really seem to resonate well with people. Still, a good tutorial takes a lot of time. So that leaves these options:

1. Everything stays free but new content is rare.
2. Everything stays free but corners are cut to save time.
3. Write new content, require payment.
4. Write new content, ask for donations.

We've already tried option one. I don't like option two because what's the point of doing something if you're not going to make it special? Option three takes it a bit too far. So option four is the winner. If I can make some income from writing tutorials, I can justify sitting down to write new tutorials.

So Cocoa Dev Central has officially started asking for donations. You can still read everything on the site for free (and I don't expect that to change), but if you like the content, please consider donating so that I can put more time into it.

At the moment, the donation button is only on the page for the C Tutorial. It will be added to any new or redesigned tutorials, and may end up on the home page.

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