I’m officially a Big Nerd. I have the t-shirt to prove it!
So I’ve been back from the Big Nerd Ranch for a couple of days now, and I’ve had time to reacquaint myself with real life. I’m able to look back on all of last week with hindsight now, and connect some dots. I definitely learned a ton in that class. If I had needed to think of anything besides programming—even where to eat for dinner—there’s no way I would have retained half of that information. I guess when they drag you out to the middle of the woods for a week, they know what they’re doing—especially after more than ten years of doing it!
They sent us all away with all of our class materials, which will prove to be invaluable, I’m sure. All of the exercises we did and all of the slides from the instructors’ presentations are included in there, along with another book: Learn Objective-C on the Mac by Mark Dalrymple and Scott Knaster. It’s not quite as extensive as the book by Stephen Kochan (disclaimer: I haven’t completed either book yet, so who’s to say for sure?), but the writers have different styles, and I find this one much easier to read. I really appreciate having both books at hand when I’m coding.
My favorite part of the week, surprisingly, was learning memory management. Not the actual time we spent on it, but the moment where I started to get it. All of a sudden, it just clicked for me. Of course, this happened after all the lectures and exercises on it. It happened during one of the later exercises, where we were just putting it into practice but focusing on a completely different feature. At that moment it ceased to be a hurdle to jump over every time I wrote a line of code.
I really loved my week at the ranch, and I wish I could have stayed for another. I highly recommend it to anyone looking to learn one of the subjects they teach. I will be back again as soon as it’s financially possible! The only decision will be what to learn next… Cocoa, perhaps? It will have to be something my husband wants to learn, too, because I will not let him miss the chance to go!
I do have some ideas for apps, one of which I’m going to start working on right away. I’m also working on a specific app for Brave New Media, and it’s actually quite the undertaking. I’ll definitely be sharing as much as I can without giving too much away. Stay tuned!