As this picture below clearly demonstrates, my wife is an intelligent person and she realized that the future is in mobile and thus that is where she would put her efforts – into learning mobile development.

She had several options: native or web, iOS or Android, self taught (as I had done), online video courses, regular university, or a hybrid approach like Full Sail. After much research, we decided that the new online Mobile Development course at Full Sail was the perfect choice. I realize that Full Sail has its detractors and I am not here to defend the school. I will say that FS has produced many excellent game designers and developers, as well as working professionals in the music, TV, and film industries. I looked at the program and told her that it looked technically sound and she should go for it if she wanted to. She enrolled and has been working hard for 18 months and is half way through the program.

Overall she is doing excellent. When she started her class she wasn’t familiar with development AT ALL, heck she wasn’t even that familiar with computers. She just wasn’t into them. 18 months in she is now what I would call an advanced user and that makes things a lot easier on her. File organization, smart naming conventions and other things I might take for granted, she had to learn. And learn them she has.

My wife has progressed to the point where if a client needed her to build a nice web presence (good design, HTML, CSS, JavaScript) and/or a mobile version of their site with jQuery Mobile she could do it, no problem. With a bit more effort she could also produce a nice “native” app utilizing PhoneGap. She is fairly well versed in local and cloud based storage (CouchDB/Cloudant). She has a natural sense of style and layout and it serves her well. While some of her classmates produced garish looking layouts, hers always struck a nice balance. She sometimes got trapped trying to work in every swipe, fade, and feature – but by the end of the project had removed what was unnecessary. If she were not an ongoing student and had time to develop her web and mobile web skills, I have no doubt that she could become an excellent web developer.

I am generally happy with the education my wife got through the web/hybrid app period of her course. At times I felt she wasn’t given enough information about a certain technology (JSON for example), but that is nitpicking. Teaching programming basics to newbies with JavaScript can be tough – but it was pulled off mostly successfully. There were times I felt the students were asked to do too much “discovery” on their own; that a topic wasn’t given the depth it needed or enough (if any!) working examples. My wife and her classmates got very frustrated at times doing work that everyone felt should have been done by the instructors.

This feeling has been exacerbated now that she has moved into native iOS development and the notoriously quirky Objective-C language. I am of the opinion that her current instructor simply glosses over too much information and leaves too much research in the hands of her students. Oftentimes students are shown NO working examples of new code concepts. Many times the students have to utilize StackOverflow or Lynda.com to find the answers to particular problems. These are excellent skills to develop and should probably be incorporated into extra credit or bonus materials, NOT part of the regular curricula. Paying $50,000 to be taught and then having to find solutions by Googling them just isn’t right.

Also there seems to be no structured use of textbooks in this part of the program. Students are provided the excellent Aaron Hillegass book, “Objective-C Programming The Big Nerd Ranch Guide” and then never instructed to use it. Rather than start students learning some C, then easing into Objective-C, then dipping into the CocoaTouch framework – students are asked to jump right in to using the framework and Interface Builder. This is just the wrong approach in my opinion. The ‘learning Objective-C’ portion of this course should have mirrored the Hillegass book and simply taught the base Objective-C language.

With all of that being said, my wife and her classmates (the 3 that are left from the original 18 or so) are making excellent progress. I can hear it in their videos (they submit videos showing off their projects and homework assignments) and see it in their code – they are picking up confidence and things are clicking. There is a sense of camaraderie between the students and it’s fun to see their many personalities coming through in their videos. A quirky bunch.

Next week her class begins examining the many frameworks associate with iOS development and I think it will be one of the funner portions of the class. We’ll see.

So at this point, would I recommend the mobile development class to others? Yes, I think I would. My wife is in the first group of students ever to take this course, so Full Sail is learning how best to pull it off. The program should only improve with each iteration. You get world class tools and some fun and innovative projects to work on. If Full Sail listens to it’s current students and addresses the shortcomings in this program they will be producing excellent mobile developers for many years to come.

I will update the blog with new posts about my wife’s progress through the course every few months. I hope this post was a little helpful to those who may be considering the mobile development program at Full Sail. Feel free to ask specific questions in the comments. Thanks.

This particular book takes the approach of teaching you these foundational things in C, which I have always felt was the best way to go about things. I also applaud this book from trying to teach you TOO MUCH C. As Aaron says, “Note that these chapters are not intended to cover the C language in detail. Quite the opposite: honed from years of teaching, this is the essential subset of what new-to-programming people need to know about programming and programming in C before learning Objective-C programming”.

Chapter 3 covers variables and types, continuing with the recipe metaphor mentioned in my previous post. You get to create two simple command line programs in this chapter, one as you follow along with the book (creating a program to calculate the cooking time of a turkey), and another you create on your own, adding two floating point numbers together and logging the result to the console.

The chapter does a good job of introducing variables and types without bogging you down with “too much, too soon”.

Chapter 4 introduces the if/else statement. You are not asked to create a program in this chapter, but rather to follow the examples in the book closely and consider them based on what you’ve learned. I like this approach, however I did actually type in the “challenge” from the end of the chapter and I suggest you do too, especially If you can’t figure it out or aren’t 100% positive of the answer. You can never spend too much time in XCode at this point.

The chapter also introduces comparison operators (< , >, ==, !=, etc) and Boolean variables, all in easily understood and digestible nuggets. The chapter closes with a look at the ternary operator and the challenge mentioned earlier.

I think the book does a good job giving new programmers just enough info and encouragement to keep them going, and it also keeps them in XCode – which I think is vital as well. So far, so good!

This is the second post in my series “Learning Objective-C”, where I walk through learning the native programming language of iOS and OS X. My guide for this journey will be the Aaron Hillegass book “Objective-C Programming The Big Nerd Ranch Guide”. Tonight I will be reviewing the first two chapters.

CHAPTER 1
There is no programming at all in chapter 1. Instead we get the usual “Who is this book for” type of material. One thing I like about Aaron Hillegass is the way he makes grand statements like “There are similar books, but this is the one you should read.” and “I’ve worked hard to capture that knowledge and dispose of everything else. There is a lot of wisdom and very little fluff in this book.” He sounds extremely confident and that makes me feel better about my chances of picking this language up. Aaron has been training people to use Objective-C since the NeXT days, so he SHOULD be confident and more than competent.

CHAPTER 2
This chapter starts by stepping you through installing Apple’s developer tools and concludes with an analogy comparing a programming function with a recipe card. Simplistic yet very illustrative and easy to understand.

In the middle section of the chapter you are walked through creating a simple command line program that outputs a couple lines of text to the XCode console. The purpose of this exercise is not to teach you any programming, but rather to expose you to XCode and the process of selecting, creating, building, and debugging a simple program.

Because I have programmed in other languages this chapter wasn’t all that helpful to me, but that’s OK. This is a beginners book and I think had I no background in programming this chapter would have been quite helpful.

We are off and running and will get started on the “meat” of the book next time.

Here’s what the article, written by guest blogger, author, and “appreneur” Chad Mureta, is about:

I started my app business from a hospital bed, wondering if I even wanted to live. I had barely survived a terrible car accident that shattered my left arm. I had gone through two groundbreaking operations, and spent 18 months in painful rehabilitation.

With limited insurance, I had racked up $100,000 in medical bills. Even though I survived, I had no clue how to get out of the deep hole I felt trapped in. I was moved to a physical rehabilitation center and worked on reconstructing my body, my mind, and ultimately my life. While I was there, I read two books that made a huge impact: Unlimited Power strengthened my thought processes, and The 4-Hour Workweek inspired me to pursue lifestyle freedom.

During that time, a good friend gave me an article about “appreneurs” and told me I should consider getting into the business. I learned that most appreneurs were one- or two-person teams with low costs, and the successful ones were bringing in millions in profits. Still in my hospital bed, in a state of semi-coherence from the pain medication, I began drawing up ideas for apps.

Three weeks after my final surgery, desperate, broke, and grasping at straws, I borrowed $1,800 from my stepdad and jumped into the app business. Fortunately, taking that leap was the best decision I’ve ever made…

These days, my life is about doing what I love while earning easy income. I run my business from my iPhone, working in a virtual world while earning real dollars. I am part of a growing community of “appreneurs,” entrepreneurs who make money from applications that are used on iPhones, iPads, iPods, Droids, and Blackberries. As of this writing, the world’s youngest appreneur is nine years old, and the oldest is 80!

OK, normally I run from stuff like this, but the rest of the post intrigued me. It was full of what sounded like good, practical advice on choosing apps to develop and how to best market them. I got a little excited. Which of course is what the article is intended to do; get me excited so I would go buy Chad’s book – which I did!

I read the book in one sitting and was still excited by the end. The book is full of checklists and action points and things to track and fill out and boy it sure seems like good advice. To someone who doesn’t yet have an app in the App Store all of the ways that Chad points out to set your apart from the pack sure seem to make sense. But are they based in reality? Is Chad a snake oil salesman just looking to sell his book (and, as I found out this morning, his soon to be announced online marketing course)?

I really don’t know. So I am turning to you – actual mobile developers to help me decide. Is Chad Mureta’s “App Empire” reality or a pipe dream?

I would like to finish by saying that if you are going to weigh in with a comment at least read the article linked at the beginning of this post. It’s only fair that you make an informed comment rather than just shooting from the hip. Thanks everyone in advance…

WHAT I’M STARTING WITH
I will be using the excellent (as far as a novice can tell anyway) book pictured above “Objective-C Programming The Big Nerd Ranch Guide”, written by none other than Aaron Hillegass. Out of all of the books I’ve looked at this is the one that spoke to me and seemed to respect my time and intelligence. Very little fluff and touches on some subject you wouldn’t normally expect to see discussed in a beginner level book; the stack and bitwise operation to name a couple. Looks like an excellent book.

WHAT I’M GOING TO WRITE ABOUT
Not sure yet, but right now I am thinking I will go through the book chapter by chapter and report how things are going, what clicks, what trips me up, etc. I suppose in a way it’ll be like an extended book review.

Well there is no time like the present to get going, so I am cracking open the book and will post when I get through the introduction and chapter 1 :)

Wish me luck – Adam