Beginning Programming on Mac?

Hello-
I would like to learn how to do some basic programming on the Mac, but I've only been able to find newbie-programming books for PC users.
For example, there is a good one by Adrian & Kathy Hughes (published by Wrox press) called _Beginning Programming_. But I can't find one for Mac users.
The one by Michael Trent & Drew McCormack, called _Beginning Mac OS X Programming_ was a promising option until I read the Intro where it said that it's really designed for those who have some familiarity with programming (especially Cocoa). Does anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks much.
PowerBook G4    

Cocoa is an intimidating language to learn if it's your first. I'd recommend learning something simpler first. Someone else recommended AppleScript, but I wouldn't recommend that. It's not a fun language, in my opinion. Unless you like the idea of using trial-and-error to learn how different applications support (or don't support) standard AppleScript commands in different ways. As for Automator -- that's like trying to learn architecture by starting with a set of a dozen toy blocks.
My personal choice for anyone new to programming would be REALbasic (http://www.realsoftware.com/). It's based on BASIC, which is perhaps the simplest mainstream language in the world. However, it throws in a twist by being object-oriented BASIC. If you don't know what "object-oriented" is, that's not really important at this point -- but many other languages, such as Cocoa, Java, C++, etc are also object-oriented. Learning the concepts of object-oriented programming in a friendly, non-threatening environment is best, and you can then apply those ideas in other languages later. When you're ready for Cocoa, you don't have to concentrate on learning a scary language AND learning to think in terms of objects.
REALbasic is not free, and I wouldn't ever think of calling it perfect, but it is a darn good environment for learning how to program!

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