Not for the Money

I learned a lesson today regarding happiness and programming. If you are concentrating on a single device and/or a niche of applications then often you feel like you’re the only one you loves the outcome of your never ending pecking at keys. And if you DO get feedback for your apps then often it’s only a rant in the reviews.

I already told you the story how SpeakerClock came to be. I did not write if for the money because frankly I did not think that anybody but myself would be using it. That’s also the reason why I am offering it for FREE initially. I’d rather get a couple of people to use it and send my feedback than have it sit on a virtual shelf collecting dust. Version 1.1 will be the one where I start charging, I decided. Or maybe the basic features now present will stay free, but some upgrades could be a good InAppPurchase.

I’m going to have a look at what we can learn about making great apps from an unexpected reaction I received.

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The Importance of Method Naming

Recently Oliver’s blog post ‘Shuffling an NSArray‘ came across my twitter feed. I’m not sure I followed the link with the intention of being critical, but after reading, I felt the need to make a couple of points. Namely, a fairly staunch opinion that in it’s current form, Oliver’s -(NSArray *)shuffled method is an example of poor naming choice. I realize that the original post was intended to showcase the ability to extend existing classes with categories (a powerful and worthwhile concept to understand). However, take into consideration that many developers new to a language will copy and paste code snippets without fully understanding them, and the importance of using proper convention in code examples becomes very clear.

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Stanford University iPhone Programming Course

Famous Standford University goes the way of the modern educational institution and beginning today makes it’s iPhone Programming Course available in parallel on iTunes U for free while it is being taught live in class by original Apple framework guru Evan Doll. So you don’t get a dusty teacher figure, but the real thing!

I encourage all students of Cocoa Touch to participate in the sessions. Simply subscribe to the video podcast on  iTunes U and watch it comfortably at home or on your iPhone. The course material including downloads and assignments can be found on an accompanying web site. Don’t be fooled by the low price tag: FREE. People usually don’t appreciate what can be had for nothing, but in this case you probably cannot find anything better.

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