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!

On Thursday, we had the best brain break we could have asked for: zip lines. I posted a teaser before, so here’s the real thing. (A huge thanks to Kevin, Goran, and Mike for the video clips!)

The first tower we climbed was about 60 feet tall. Once we got to the top, we realized there was a tiny little platform hanging over the edge that we had to stand on to go down the line. By then, I was white as a sheet and ready to cry. (For those who don’t know me, I’m absolutely terrified of heights.) I was 6th or 7th in line. This clip shows the the tiny launch platform and the view from the tower.

The first tower – what a view

As soon as I got in the air, however, all the fear was gone. The first jump was the hardest part of the entire thing. In this clip of the first zip line, you can even hear me screaming, “Woo-hoo!” The first zip line was about 1,000 feet long and got me up to a speed of 35 mph or so.

Zip Line 1

After that, it was easy as pie. After the first zip line’s ground landing, we started climbing this system of platforms and bridges through the woods, connected by the occasional zip line. We were never less than 50 feet off the ground. The second zip line went from platform to platform, got me up to 45 mph, and was 770 feet long. Here’s the clip.

Zip line 2

Some of the bridges were only a single steel cable that we walked across like a tightrope. For all of them, we were hooked to a secure wire above our heads, so we could not fall. The third zip line left from a tiny little platform, 200 feet above the ground, on what seemed to be an old telephone pole. It went over 1,000 feet across a gorge and a river, which was at least a few hundred feet below the zip line.

The next clip is me from the launching point of the last zip line, followed by a clip of me coming in to the last tower. Last is a clip from a classmate, Goran, who shot the entire thing from a first-person point of view. He gets some good shots of the beautiful gorge below the zip line.

Zip line 3 (part 1)

Zip line 3 (part 2)

Zip line 3 (Goran)

Yes, that is me on a zip line, going 35 mph, 150 ft above the ground.

There was coding today, of course. I just didn’t take any video of it! I’ll be writing more about that (and the zip lines) later tonight.

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.

Rotation_web-iPhone

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)!

As you can see, today was a big day. We learned a lot. It feels like Thanksgiving for my brain: I’m completely stuffed, but I’m craving seconds, and I will eat more no matter what.

The Quiz application is really simple. There are two buttons: one shows a new question, the other shows the answer. Even before the buttons worked, testing that first app on my phone was the most exciting thing I’ve ever done with Apple code.

“Far Away” made use of the CoreLocation class—the iPhone’s ability to use your current location. It tracks distance you travel (starting when you press the “Start Tracking” button), calculates your current altitude, and tells you how many miles you are from home. Everyone in the class had to walk about half a mile up the road leading out of here to even get a signal strong enough to get location data. (Notice the “Searching…” in the status bar of the screenshot? That’s what I see most of the day.)

“Hypnosister” introduced us to CoreGraphics. We created graphics on the fly (in this case, concentric circles of different colors with text on top of it) and learned how to pan & zoom with multi-touch events.

I think tomorrow we will cover the accelerometer (rotating your phone) and controlling the camera. If tomorrow is anything like today was, we will also cover about 1,000 other topics.

Memory management is still the toughest part so far. We haven’t written any apps big enough to have measurable memory leaks, but we will by the end of the week. Until then, it’s all conceptual, and without actually seeing the memory use skyrocket in an app you made, it’s harder to understand the whole thing.

I would say that dinner tonight was the best one yet. Grilled pork with peaches (we are in Georgia) and this amazing glaze, with sweet potatoes and grilled vegetables. Mmmmm.

I really do feel like I have a solid enough understanding of the language to start writing programs on the iPhone. We set up our phones tonight to be ready for development, and now there’s a test app on my phone that is nothing but a white icon that opens a white screen.

(You know those Flashlight apps on the App Store? That’s all they are. It took about 20 seconds to make it and put it on my phone.)

Our new instructor, Joe Conway, seems like the perfect kind of guy to be teaching the rest of the week. I looked ahead in the exercises for the week (there are two giant books he wrote for the week… the exercises alone are about 200 pages) and his writing is hilarious. He’s sharp, quick, and had a good presence in front of the group. He’s younger than I expected—I think he’s around my age!

All the meals were fantastic again. I won’t go into as much detail as I did yesterday. I will say that I had never had trout before tonight, and I liked it a lot.

Tomorrow we write our first iPhone app. By tomorrow night I should be able to get a solid start on the app idea I brought with me, which is incredibly exciting.

One last thing, on a much more technical note: The square-bracket function calls, while frustrating at first, are absolutely perfect for passing multiple arguments. Tell me, which is more readable:

PHP:
[php]if (strpos(substr($string, -4, 4), ‘.png’) !== false)[/php]

Objective-C:
[cpp]if ([string hasSuffix:@".png"])[/cpp]

I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t find “strpos” in the Oxford English dictionary. “Suffix” was in there, though.

I talked to a few more people in the group over breakfast. We were introducing ourselves, having the typical “where are you from, what do you do” conversation. I mentioned that I worked in motion graphics in addition to programming. One of the guys at the table, Michael, said, “So are you an After Effects user?” I told him I was, and he replied, “I’m the Product Manager for After Effects at Adobe.” He handed me his card and said if I ever had any questions, to give him a call. “If I can’t help you, I’ll find somebody who can.” Talk about a fantastic start to my morning!

Class started just after 9:00 AM, and we started with the core basics of the C language and syntax: data types, method calls, loops and decisions, and a little bit on memory management. The class is done in short lecture/lab segments; Mark talks for 15-30 minutes on a topic and then gives us an exercise to do. It keeps the pace and energy up, and immediately reinforces what we’ve just learned.

Lunch was at 12:30—it was sandwiches, salad, potato salad, chips, and chocolate chip cookies that were fresh from the oven. We had one more lecture/lab segment after lunch, and then went for a walk. It was optional, but the whole group went. In the shade, it was nice… but in the sun, we all got pretty warm. Most of us looked like we had gotten rained on by the time we were done with the walk.

The walk was perfect, though, for getting some energy back and staving off the afternoon lunch coma. We went back to class and started learning about Objective-C and its differences from C. Mark had a good metaphor to explain what we’re learning this weekend: “Joe [the iPhone instructor, starting Monday] likes to say that after this week, you guys will be rock stars. Today and tomorrow, we’re the roadies.” We’re doing the heavy lifting that will make the rest of the week easier, even though nothing we’re learning is very exciting yet. The “fun stuff” starts with getting further into Objective-C, which we will do tomorrow, and the iPhone SDK, which will be Monday–Friday.

Dinner was utterly fantastic. It was rich roast beef over garlic mashed potatoes, with a light cheese sauce drizzled over the top, and sprinkled with green onions. Even the side of steamed vegetables tasted delicious (I think they were covered in garlic butter). We were sitting at the dinner table for two hours having more great conversation, and then we moved down to the classroom for open lab time, where we stayed until almost 11:00.

It was a great day, and I think tomorrow will be even better. After the wood tick I pulled off of my arm at dinner, however, I’m not sure if I’ll be partaking in the nature hike tomorrow afternoon…

Our instructor for tomorrow and Sunday is Mark Fenoglio. He will teach us the Objective-C language in those two days. Hopefully my brain will still be a solid on Monday, and not a liquid!

I got to hear a lot of his stories about past work experiences, how he got hired at Big Nerd Ranch, and his passion for JRR Tolkien. I didn’t do a lot of talking in that four hours—I just tried to absorb all of the history and knowledge and humor that I could! Between him, the other four students at the table, and the bottle of red wine that was consumed, it was a fantastic dinner. Oh, and the food was amazing, too.

At the airport, and on the 50-minute shuttle ride to the Ranch, I had some equally great conversation with some other students. There’s even someone else here from the Twin Cities, which is great! Another student is really into filmmaking, which was the basis of another great conversation. Essentially, everyone here is pretty cool and interesting. Of course, I didn’t expect anything less from a group of people as nerdy as me (or more so)!

My camera was buried at the bottom of my bag, so I didn’t take any pictures before getting to my room after dinner (and I didn’t want to seem like some crazy person who wanted visual documentation of the entire trip… even though I do). I did snap this picture of the jacuzzi I have in my room, mostly to make my husband jealous. I just might go relax in it before I go to sleep.

Tomorrow is a big day, and my brain needs to be as ready as possible to be completely overloaded with Objective-C goodness. I’ll write more—much more—tomorrow night.

Tomorrow I’m off to Banning Mills in Whitesburg, Georgia to attend Beginning iPhone Bootcamp. I will be locked away in the middle of the woods for a week, chin-deep in Objective-C code and iPhone software development. The image on the left is a view from one of their cabins. It’s really unlike the development environment I’m used to! It will be nice to be learning to code while surrounded by beauty, peacefulness, and other geeks.

I’m pretty pumped about the trip. In theory, I’ll be leaving as an iPhone programming newbie and coming home ready to develop iPhone apps from beginning to end. When Brave New Media releases the first iPhone app that makes a few hundred thousand dollars, I promise to get a top hat and cane and pretend I’m the Monopoly man. I’ll even post pictures.

Today I need to finish prepping the work laptop for iPhone development, clean off my incredibly chaotic desk, and then go home to finish packing. I’ll be back with more tomorrow!

Just a reminder: You can follow my posts on the Big Nerd Ranch trip here at Aliso the Geek, or follow them at the Brave New Media blog.

About a week ago I got an email from Big Nerd Ranch telling me how best to prepare for the trip. I’m reading Programming in Objective-C 2.0 by Stephen Kochan. Let me tell you something about Objective-C: The syntax is very dissimilar to every other programming language I know. So far that has been the biggest barrier in working through this book. For example, when you need to call a function on an instance of a class in Actionscript or Java, you do this:

myObject.method(arguments);

In Objective-C:

[myObject method: arguments];

It’s not impossible to understand, just hard to get used to. Defining a class is also somewhat different: instead of just one class definition enclosed by curly braces, it’s this:

[cpp]@interface ClassName: Parent Class
{
// instance variables go here
}
// instance & class methods (declaration only) go here
@end

@implementation ClassName
// method definitions go here
@end[/cpp]

I’ll be posting one more time before I leave for the Big Nerd Ranch on Friday, and hopefully after I’ve gotten through a few more chapters in the Objective-C book. Once I arrive in Georgia, I will be posting at the end of every day with any interesting highlights (code-related or otherwise).