$0.99 iPhone apps... Here I come!

Jul 12, 2011

by TeamAWAC

Exclusive to the Lunch Network

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I recently took a 3 day course in Santa Monica called "Intensive 3-Day iPhone Workshop". The course is designed to be an introduction to iPhone programming as well as provide some basic overview of Objective-C which is the primary language the iPhone SDK is built upon.

The class was taught by Stephen Kochen who is also the author of Programming in Objective-C. At the very beginning, he did a quick assessment of the skill level of the students and then tailored the course material appropriately. Almost all the students came from a similar background, including myself. We had some programming experience in a language other than Objective-C, but we were all new to the iPhone programming. While there are no required prerequisites for the course, it does help if you've had some programming experience, particularly if it is in an object oriented language. If the concept of strings, integers and arrays is a little fuzzy to you, you would be better served building up a programming foundation before taking this class. After taking the class, I do feel like the iPhone SDK is very approachable for new programmers, but this class probably shouldn't be your first experience in programming.

Throughout the three days, the course consisted of lecture mixed with "hands-on" lab work where we would build simple iPhone applications and then iterate on them with new concepts that were introduced. There's a great feeling of accomplishment as you work through the projects because you get several "finished projects" in a very short amount of time.

The iPhone SDK is huge, and it would be impossible to cover the entire thing in 3 days. The course covered several frameworks, but not ones I was specifically interested in. However, we were given enough instruction to be able to look through the documentation on Apple's website and use what we learned to guide us through other frameworks. It was very much a "teach a man to fish" mentality.

After the course, I was immediately excited to go out and build the next "Angry Birds", but it became apparent that much more repetition was still needed (just like learning any language). While trying out new projects, I constantly referenced the projects I'd built in the class to look up how we did certain things. It was a great resource to have in the end. While there's still quite a bit for me to learn, I came away from the class with confidence to take on new projects. I highly recommend the class as a way to kickstart the learning process.

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devora July 12, 2011

I look forward to the next Angry Birds :)

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About the reviewer

Andrew (TeamAWAC)
Ranked #2

I'm a technology early adopter. I thoroughly enjoy geeking out with the latest hardware, software and electronics. I probably have as much fun setting up, tweaking, and configuring systems as I do actually … more