>> who would be playing with the CALayer class without ever having touched the documentation?
How many hackers out there always read the entire manual before playing around? I'd wager most.
I agree that Objective-C is slightly schizophrenic about the dot-syntax, but I would argue that dot-syntax for getters and setters is easier for a newcomers to learn.
I'm not saying one has to read the manual before playing around, but some things are simply not explorable with at least a little bit of introduction. You had to read somewhere that [NSObject alloc]init] was how to create a new object; you didn't just guess at it. Similarly, how far would someone get creating a CALayer, and adding it to a view without ever looking at the docs?
If someone is having a hard time learning Objective-C, maybe the real suggestion is to start by reading at least a bit of the manual.
How many hackers out there always read the entire manual before playing around? I'd wager most.
I agree that Objective-C is slightly schizophrenic about the dot-syntax, but I would argue that dot-syntax for getters and setters is easier for a newcomers to learn.