iPhone development: memory management

Coming from Microsoft’s .NET environment, the first the thing that really frustrated me when I was trying to develop in Objective C 2.0 was the garbage collection. It felt like I was going “back to basics” with memory management. Honestly, this hurdle at first glance seems like a large hurdle to jump, but as I get back into Apple’s development documentation, I’ve noticed that they’ve made lots of improvements to their original documentation.  Even going back through their “Your First iPhone Application” document, I noticed that they have many more references to the topics that explain Objective C 2.0 (though you’ll have to sign up before you can view this document…).

What cleared all this up to me was the Memory Management guide.  When I was originally creating iPhone applications I noticed that I was getting lots of EXC_BAD_ACCESS exceptions and I wasn’t sure how I was getting them.  Reading the memory management guide really cleared up all my confusion and I realized that Objective C 2.0 really wasn’t going “back to basics” – it actually feels like it gives me more control.