Big Nerd Ranch Day 4: My brain is full. Please try again later.
I can’t believe how fast this class is going. I feel like I have months of iPhone programming knowledge behind me already.
Topics covered today: the accelerometer (tilting, shaking), phone rotation, working with table views, and editing/adding/deleting data from an app. I worked ahead a little bit and learned how to control the phone’s camera, too.
The psychedelic image here is from my “HypnoTime” app, which is an extension of the CoreGraphics exercise we did yesterday. The center point of the circles move when the phone tilts, and when you shake the phone, it cycles through the spectrum of colors.
We made a very simple app using the orientation and auto-resizing features. Notice that the slider extends to be the entire width of the screen in portrait and in landscape, and the buttons stay in the lower corners.
Our third app (which was complex enough that it took almost half of the day) was “HomePwner,” an app that keeps track of possessions, their serial numbers, and their monetary worth—along with an image you are prompted to take with your camera.
Tomorrow, after going over the camera, it looks like we will be doing data saving/loading, low memory warnings, more with table views, and multi-touch events (like rotating, scaling, swiping, etc).
Tonight, Aaron Hillegass (founder & owner of Big Nerd Ranch) stopped in for dinner, and to give a quick review session on Objective-C. He talked a bit about memory management (which I’m finally beginning to understand well) and object pointers, and a few other topics that students had questions on. He also told us the story of how Big Nerd Ranch came into being.
They’re working on building their own Big Nerd Ranch facility right now, and it sounds pretty great. They think it will be ready in about 2 years. The entire grounds will be designed completely around these classes, providing absolutely optimal settings for learning & collaborating. They’re even putting hammocks and reading lamps on the individual room balconies so students can chill out and read with a view of the wilderness. Aaron showed us some drawings of what the place will look like. After all this, I think I’ll just have to come back in two years (and maybe once more before then, if it’s in the cards)!