I would really like some advice from you guys out there on the bunch of questions I have in my head:
I know C, and C++, but I don't know anything about objective C, what is the best resource out there for a walkthrough/tutorial (aware of primer but if there are others ... )
Using the current objective c resources that I have I am actually planning on doing a simple walkthrouh on pure objective c programming first before I jump into the more cooler stuff like cocoa touch etc. Pertaining to this, I am unable to create a pure objective c project that is not part of any sub project or inherits/imports from another class, The path I attempted to follow was:
Create a brand new EMPTY IOS Xcode project that has no build, target or configuration:
This seems the most likely way but it does ask me what subclass this is a part of. I am not interested in dealing with any of that since I want to simply experience creating objective c classes from scratch.
A really good resource is the Lynda Xcode 4/iOS programming guide. I used it when I was getting started. It shows you how to do stuff, gives you walkthrough examples which give lots of concepts a context, and tells you about theory and concepts behind the language.
As far as I know, there is no way to create an empty project in Xcode. However, there's also little point to learning Objective-C without learning about Xcode iOS and Cocoa too, since you'll probably never use Objective-C for anything except iOS or Mac development.
Xcode is the best environment by far, not least because no one really uses Objective-C except Apple, and Xcode is designed to work with iOS and Mac Applications. If you're really determined, there is a plugin for eclipse called ObjectiveEclipse, which has closed down but is still available for download. There's also an IDE called Kdevelope.
Hope this helps,
Luke