Comment by nickloewen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nickloewen | Hacker News Reader

Coincidentally, I also started trying to learn C programming on System 6 yesterday.

So far the key resource for me has been "Macintosh C Programming by Example,"[0] which also uses THINK C. The disk that originally accompanied the book is available on Macintosh Garden.[1]

Scott Knight also has a nice intro to classic Mac development, using Pascal in the Macintosh Programmer's Workshop instead of THINK C.[2]

Then there's also the old Inside Macintosh books[3] and other how-to books[4][5], but I haven't looked at those yet.

[0]: https://vintageapple.org/macprogramming/pdf/Macintosh_C_Prog...

[1]: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/macintosh-c-programming-exa...

[2]: https://knight.sc/software/2020/04/19/classic-macos-developm...

[3]: https://vintageapple.org/inside_o/

[4]: https://vintageapple.org/macprogramming/index_year.html

[5]: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/learn-c-the-macintosh-0

Inside Macintosh is vital for classic Mac programming. Get a copy of the the 1995 Inside Macintosh CD-ROM -- it's much easier to work with than the PDF scans you've found at Vintage Apple. With an online index (like ObiWan), jumping to documentation for a Toolbox function is trivial.

https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/inside-macintosh-cd-rom

Great tip, thanks! Macintosh C Programming by Example suggested the shareware "Inside Mac Desk Accessory," but I'm not sure if that's available anymore; this seems like a good alternative.

I've also noticed that the original documentation for OS 8 and 9 is still available on the web—http://mirror.informatimago.com/next/developer.apple.com/doc.... Do you know if there was there ever a web-based version of the earlier Inside Macintosh?

Nope. Early editions of Inside Macintosh were pre-Internet. The CD edition was 1995, for instance -- web publishing was still in its infancy at that point.

The PDFs on Apple's old developer site (mirrored at informatimago, among other places) are a decent substitute for the Inside Macintosh CD, although they are a bit scattered around the site.

If you can find a physical copy of Vol I-III on eBay or elsewhere, I highly recommend it. It's much easier to flip through (even though it's a big tome) than searching through PDFs in my experience.

While not C focused, https://macgui.com might be a good resource for your endeavor.

This does look promising, thanks! There's clearly a wealth of information available on the web—the trick is just tracking it down...

I routinely search "site:preserve.mactech.com $query" — there's a lot of interesting and helpful tech tips there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com