Thursday 12 November 2009

Stanford University

Downloaded Stanford University iTunes programming Course and printed the lessons slides (yes thank you for the black background - now have no printer ink left - good to see 2010 version is white!)

Watched all of the lessons and completed most of the assignments (HelloPoly etc) - some worked without any problems - some I resorted to downloading a sample solution and working the answer back.    I was disappointed that there was no Core Data module (Winter 2010 version does include this).  But overall worth doing - I definitely learnt more by trying the assignments and getting it wrong and then having to work out the solution.

This course also made me realise that I needed to work on my Objective C so I invested in Learn Objective-C on the Mac by Mark Dalrymple and Scott Knaster - this filled in some gaps.   I also bought 'Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass' (I am a sucker for the 'buy 2 for x amount' marketing ploy that Amazon offer!!!).    I know this is probably a really good bok and very important but it still sits on my office shelf and makes me feel guilty as it remains unread!