garrett johnson

I recently attended a training class for Objective-C and iPhone development held by About Objects. I have never really attended a traditional training class before, but I have been very interested in "iOS" platform as a whole, but I have had no time to sit down and learn *another* platform…. Luckily my employer was kind enough to foot the bill for me to go and get a head start on it. (#win!!!)  Anyhow, I wanted to write a blurb about my experience incase any else was tinkering with the idea of training on the "iOS" platform, and particularly with About Objects.

I can't say enough about the quality of the training. Jonathan Lehr of About Objects, was a far better instructor than I have ever had in a university setting. Not only did I leave having a solid understanding of Objective-C and the platform, I gained an understanding of C and memory management so much better than I did before. 

The training class in particular was the "Introduction to Objective-C/iPhone and iPad" bundle which lasted 7 days. 

The first day or so we reviewed basic C constructs and memory management in the C realm. He pushed on understanding C because it you really will get lost if you go into Objective-C not grasping C types and quirks. By understanding it, later on we were able to check out header files within the Foundation Kit and figure out what was going on. This really came in handy when trying to figure out what type of parameters certain methods needed.

The next few days we got neck deep in Objective-C. All I can say is Objective-C is a sick language! It has a elegant syntax, an easy to assume API, object orientation, and dynamic binding as well as static typing. He reviewed just about everything you can imagine ranging from simple to complex types, i/o,  built in classes, custom classes, and cool features such as protocols and class extensions. We also spend a good deal of time on memory management, how to debug leaks, and how to leverage features like properties to help you out with all that.

The last few days we spend learning the ins and outs of UIKit and building iPhone apps. Once we understood some of the "harder ways" of coding all of our views , he introduced Interface Builder. At that point we were building our classes and mapping out methods and properties to Interface Builder.

We ended the classes building a great little application packed with fun features. So with all that said, I really just cant recommend About Objects enough. Jonathan has been programming Apple/NextStep devices longer than I have been alive. He knows his stuff! If you are able to attending any type of training, I would put this on top of your list.

And on a ending note, we were fortune enough to have an Apple employee taking the class with us, and she kindly invited us to eat at the employee Mac Caffe at Apple HQ. So that was a nice bonus! (not to mention I saw Steve Jobs on the way in OMG!)