We suggested a metaphor in Chapter 1, Hello macOS, making a comparison between an artist's brushes and paints and the frameworks available to the macOS developer through Cocoa. In this chapter, we'll take a look at some of the concepts we will need to make effective and creative use of all the tools that Cocoa puts at our disposal. Like using any tool, using Cocoa's frameworks means being aware of how they work and how they were intended to be used. This is not to say that macOS development is nothing more than learning to connect up a few pre-prepared framework objects, far from it. The very power of Cocoa is that it gives you an enormous amount of control over its seemingly innumerable features, allowing you to dive deeply into the nuts and bolts wherever you need that level of access.
But it does mean adhering to some ground rules as a kind of default...
