The Cocoa Cooking Class

This came out of two ideas I had. The first was Code4Pizza – the idea that people, in order to learn, would be willing to spend their time coding for open source projects. I still think this idea is a winner for getting younger folk involved but as an evening class, it fills in many … Continue reading “The Cocoa Cooking Class”

This came out of two ideas I had.

The first was Code4Pizza – the idea that people, in order to learn, would be willing to spend their time coding for open source projects. I still think this idea is a winner for getting younger folk involved but as an evening class, it fills in many gaps present in the current market for young and really smart folk who want to use computers for more than FaceBook and MySpace.

The second was Tuesday Night Cocoa – something the lads up at Mac-Sys were doing – on a Tuesday evening when the Enterprise Park was open late, they would gang together and learn Cocoa from the books, helping each other through tough problems.

So, the Cocoa Cooking Class was born.

First off, I’m not even sure if Tuesday night is the best sort of time for something like this but it’s catchy, sosumi.

The Background:
Due to my organising of DevDays and generally being loud about the iPhone, I’m inundated with people wanting to learn how to do stuff on the iPhone. How to write applications and generally take part in the gold rush that is the iPhone. I’m working my way through the books but as my time is ‘expensive’ (in so far as as it’s really bloody hard to find ‘free’ time), I’m thinking I need to formalise something in this respect. My idea is that an experienced developer guides a workgroup on a weekly or biweekly basis through an application specification, design and build. The workgroup then owns that app and can do whatever they want with it. I’ve spoken to an experienced developer about it and he’s on board, details yet to be discussed. It’s unreasonable to expect him to dedicate this time for free so we have to take that into account and allow for him to help people ‘online’ in a forum or via email. Holding it on a Tuesday night might make sense but the idea is to get someone who knows what they’re talking about to come in and spend time instructing people and get paid to do it. If it’s not worth the money then we stop paying them and we hack it together on our own time. We even have the option of varying our instructors.

The Pitch:
Take one room with enough seating for 11 people.
Fill with 10 or so eager would-be application developers. Do not over-fill.
Add in one seasoned instructor. Mix for twenty minutes.
Establish base level of capability and break the people into 3-5 groups.
Distribute skills liberally through the groups to attempt to maintain consistency.
Start to build projects, one for each group for 90 minutes.
Break for 15 minutes to check consistency and share experiences.
Return to the room and continue to build knowledge for a further hour.
Stop activity and get each workgroup to show and tell for 5 minutes each.
Rinse and repeat weekly or bi-weekly.

To cover costs, everyone hands the instructor a £20 note. This covers room hire, instructor time and during the week support. That’s a reasonable night out.

Reasoning:
It’s my belief that this will create multiple opportunities for Mac and iPhone developers in the province. It will provide a collaborative approach to building applications with some real potential for IP creation and future revenue generation. Mix this with XCake and other initatives and we’ve got something to talk about. Would be even better if we could get some sort of funding for it (or even just a free room somewhere for the evenings).

What do you think?

0 thoughts on “The Cocoa Cooking Class”

  1. I probably have the classic catch of “time and place” but I would be interested in doing this.

    I suspect that this isn’t the type of thing that can be done online. Or is the standford itunes released course that good?

  2. sounds like a good idea. would there be room for non-mac owners to skimp off a double mac owner.

    roughly translated as – i own a pc. can i borrow a mac to get to this class [if it runs!]

  3. What level of coding experience matt? Have development experience, but it is long in the past since I moved into infrastructure…. But I’m sure the embers are there and may spark into life….

  4. I have very little development experience with the iPhone, but a fair bit of development background. Would be very interested, particularly if its at a novice entry.

  5. Sounds like a fine idea! When the next college year rolls around and I’m back in Dublin, I’d love to join a group like this. I’m only a second year undergrad (going on third year), but I’m eager to learn!

  6. Very interested. Complete novice.. have attempted to begin teaching myself but something like this would be great. Wouldn’t want to be a drag on more skilled types though!

  7. I think this is one of the best ideas this year (so far). For a while i have been on the fence with programming for the iphone – will I spend the time (which is non existent) learning “How To programme” or will I just bring someone in and pay them to develop for me and get the job done.

    If I pay someone then I will never get round to learning this technology and we run the risk of students and programmers being left behind in industry.

    Mostly I think we should encourage and offer this program to as many people as possible – i agree the initial classes should be limited to “test” how it is going to work and build a course outlines with the correct objectives, time to develop and brainstorm, group work etc.

    On a whole, the concept is great.

    Develop a class to TEACH iPhone development so that the younger generation (as well as me) can start now to develop and build the Apps of tomorrow.

    There is a lot of really good programmers out there just waiting to be nudged in the right direction. This course sounds like the right one and at the right time, with iPhone 3.0 around the corner.

    One thing we could do with this course (once it is up and running) is to look at talking to the universities to offer it as part of some courses. I know we need one step at a time but as we end a Uni year and plan it over the summer months with a practise class we could be up and running for September with a full of Course developed and “approved” to be run in other centres and locations.

    If you need a room – Giant Assocates kindly offers our Training Room in Chlorine Gardens for FREE.

    Count me in Please !
    (complete beginner – but fast learner)

  8. This looks like something great!! where do I sign up?!
    You know you could fill this 4 or 5 times over!! 20 spot is nothing for it either!

    are you thinking about building quite a few small apps over the course of a few weeks or work on one larger project?

  9. A superb idea again Matt and we would also offer space in our new office when this gets up and running, again for free if it’s needed.

    This is the sort of thing you’d love academia to be able to offer, progressive, forward looking but realistically it’s up to the developer community to forge its own path.

    One thought would be that businesses needing iPhone apps could develop a spec and hire the class for whatever fees incurred in holding it whereby making it free to learn? And then commercial apps come out the other end with perhaps an agreed percentage paid back into the class to help it self sustain?

  10. @Marty – I think your latter idea of the class being ‘hired’ to work on ideas is pretty smart – though would require some risk management and planning. That in itself is an important part of the development process.

    Academia can offer this sort of thing but, as is typical, private services can move quicker and are not subject to the rigors required of changing an academic plan. End of the day, this is a ‘vocational’ rather than ‘educational’ initiative which might reap benefits for some.

  11. I think it’s a fantastic idea. I’d love to join in, though I’m not sure I’d have enough experience either (Just completed 1st year Computer Science at Queens so some level of Java is really the height of my programming knowledge so far 🙁 ). Would work my ass off to learn though if that helps! 😀

    About getting a course like this into the universities; I’m happy to help out there if that ever does move forward because I can get in touch with any of the computing lecturers at Queens at least. But I agree with mj’s last comment, a private service might work better because it would probably be more willing to just run with things and adjust and adapt as needed. A university course would be more rigid, which isn’t great a new idea like this. 🙁

  12. @Michael – there are plans afoot for a CompSci course on Mobile Development in one of the unversities. End of the day they have to pick ‘a’ platform and only one of them has significant market share at the moment.

    The course will be aimed at beginners. I’ve begun scoping out some ideas. There’s also going to be caveats regarding people making sure they are signed up to ADC beforehand. And if they want to do on-device development they will
    a) need to bring their own Mac
    b) have their own iPod touch or iPhone
    c) have their own deployment certificate
    Otherwise it’s going to be simulator only!

    A University Course would be great – I’d love to have the time/money to attend one – more for the actual ‘learning HOW’ to program rather than being taught a bit of code on one platform.

    Anyway – bigger plans afoot and I need to focus on WWDC.

  13. I think the idea of this being “private” as opposed to Educational is fine. As long as we close each group off into a class so that people cant come and go. If you book into the session you should be committed to stay for the full term and we should agree a time period. This way the course stays on focus and we keep the momentum going forward

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