Book On Programming Projects

There are some books that are majorly references, such as the Kochan book on Objective-C (not Cocoa). And others are really cookbooks. Two books like this:

The Vermont Recipes, Cheeseman
Cocoa Prog. Developers Handbook, Chisnall

I haven't read them but my friend recommends them.

I agree with K about the books he's recommended.  I haven't read Cheeseman or Chisnall - however I've heard people say nice things about them.

May I give a shameless plug for my tutorials.  They are free and I'm willing to discuss them on the forum, or privately (by email, Skype or phone). http://clanmills.com/articles/cocoatutorials/

My son Alan has been following on on-line course at Stanford University about "Developing Applications for the iPhone".  It's taught by a Stanford professor and an Apple Engineer from Cupertino.  Alan has made very impressive progress with Cocoa and Obj/C very quickly.  (he is a experienced software engineer and only has to learn the Obj/C Cocoa stuff)  http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi-bin/drupal/

If you feel we haven't given you the best pointers, please explain a little more about what you'd like,  Asking for a book about "programming projects" covers a wide range of things.  It's a bit like saying I'd like a book about being a "musician" or doing "something in medicine".  If you explain more, we'll be happy to provide more suggestions.
 

 I have the belief that the kind of book I am looking for has not been written. A book where the first few chapter are stand alone, small programs but it would advance to one major project. It would be like something you would find in a course teaching, whatever, starting off small and simple, ending up with one larger  project.

It is not that I do not have an imagination, it is that I keep dreaming up things that are too far beyond my skills.

I will look at everything the both of you have posted. Thanks kompilesoft, and clanmills 

I know what you mean in your second paragraph! For a goal, how about you create a full-featured, minimalist, Web browser; start with clanmills' tutorial 'BYOB' and build up to something well-done.

I believe Cheeseman's book is a "step by step" guide to a real application.  Gary (another forum member) said to me "it's detailed down to the last key-stroke".  Maybe that's a good book and it has been recently revised to works with XCode 3.0.

O'Reilly published a book "Learning Cocoa" which was written by Apple (about 2002) - and it takes a step by step approach.  Sadly the books so out of date with XCode, that it's not longer useful.  Be careful to keep away from older books which will probably confuse and frustrate you.

You will find that once you've learned a few classes (for example, buttons, text strings and webkit), you're in good shape to go much further.  Mastering the first few classes takes effort, however you'll soon realize that lessons learnt transfer well to other classes.  The mountain of learning doesn't look so high once you've started to climb.

Both books look like something I could use so thanks for pointing them out. After I finish with my current book I will move to one of these.

FYI..... I found a children book of programming projects. If anyone has kids just do a search on the Barns & Noble website, I think I use the terms "Computer Project".