Northern Ireland is currently suffering a massive skills gap. Every major IT employer in Northern Ireland is crying out for more skilled personnel. Some of them are wanting graduates, others are just wanting programmers who know what they are doing.

That’s not to say we don’t have a lot of programmers, but we have very few great programmers. And we spend far too much time putting students through degrees where they can have their enthusiasm for life removed, module by module. Our programmers lack important skills – social skills, management skills and business skills. More importantly, for a global economy, customer skills.

Earlier this month, when questioning why an error occurred in some software, the developer first accused me of doing something stupid and when I replied this was not the case, a co-developer suggested another stupid thing. There seemed to be some sort of arrogant assumption that I, having been on the Internet for 20 years, would have clicked buttons randomly while trying to submit a form. I resented the implication because the problem was undoubtedly their code. But a blind-spot in their ability to deal with a customer left me feeling annoyed, under-serviced and resentful of the entire exchange. Add to that my general lack of satisfaction with customer-unfriendly solutions.

So, for the benefit of customers everywhere, keep in mind that the customer might be right, that they might not be idiots and that, just maybe, your code is wrong.

Ian Robinson wrote:

Like in NaNoWriMo you are not going to produce an app that will make you a fortune, or maybe even make it to the App Store. But what it might give you is the confidence that you can take a concept for an App from design, through to running on your device (or in a simulator). This will hopefully show you that it is possible for you to do App development. Even if it’s just as a hobby and for fun. And if your App is useful you can spend time over the next few months maybe refining it and releasing it for others to use.

Ian also has a heap of starter links. And I have a truckload of books.

More important than a promise to anyone else is a promise to yourself. I’m going to do my best to work on this for an hour from 8 pm to 9 pm every night in December, permitting breaks for events, family and Christmas.

I’m entering it in my calendar right now. Who’s up for it?

Geoff McGimpsey pointed this out:

Five easy ways to get you coding
Aside from the usual “Programming is fun” speech that you will get from any geek, learning to code can help you to solve many day to day technical quickly and quite easily. It also earns you a fair amount of kudos among other computer users. That’s why I’ve put together a list of five great ways to learn to program without having to spend hours reading a book that is more than likely going to go out of date within a year or two. – from memeburn

Geoff runs a PR and public affairs agency, McGimpsey Communications, and is a top bloke.

There was also some brief discussion on Twitter about the difference between initiatives like “iPad into schools” and projects like Raspberry Pi – a £25 computer designed to teach kids about programming. They both represent a leap forward in technology capability for schools though it’s most definitely not an either-or situation.

• The iPad enhances communication, increases interactivity and collaboration. It partially replaces textbooks, can replace notepads, assures delivery of assignments and timetables, can even be the active element in a homework setting. Sounds fantastic – but the iPad is not a programmable environment. For whatever reason known best to themselves, they won’t let even sandboxed development environments on there. They’ve conceded to let some BASIC interpreters (like in the C64 emulator) but there’s no way to produce anything else or expert that content out.
• Raspberry Pi, in contrast, provides an inexpensive and, more importantly, permissive way for kids to get involved in programming computers. It’s a UK clone of Arduino – a basic ARM-based machine running a Linux shell. In my opinion they need to make it a little more accessible than this, but ultimately easily hackable. In other words – not the antithesis of the iPad but more of the iPad being a companion to the device. This project obviously aims to restart the home computing revolution that began in the 80s in the UK with the BBC Micro and the Spectrum.

This is a useful resource for Computer Programming for Everyone (cp4e).

I’d be interested in comments here as some conversation around the office was regarding how much it takes to start a product-based software startup. This is interesting to me because I’ve hired three software developers during my time in Mac-Sys and Infurious had at least one software developer in-house.

Our estimate was a development team of 3-4 people for a minimum of two years would mean probably half a million pounds when you add travel, marketing, overheads.

This assumption was based on 4 people (presumably 3 developers, 1 designer), earning mid-range to low-end salaries (£25,000 per annum) probably because they have some sort of equity stake.

This is assuming you’re not a service company – you’re not paying salaries by doing development for other people.

And then there’s the assumption that it’ll take you a year to build it and the second year you’re building product #2 and supporting product #1 with bug fixes and updates.

Just some links to remind myself.

ManiacDev has a host of iOS development resources from tutorials on how to make glossy buttons to comparisons of open source and commercial game engines.

• iPad Development Tutorials
• iPhone Game Development Resources

Alex Payne writes about his moderate stance on the iPad:

Human-computer interaction has found a sweet spot on the iPad. It’s all the power of desktop computing, plus the valuable constraints of mobile devices, minus the limitations of both. It just makes sense. Use one for a couple hours and your desktop or laptop will seem clumsy, arbitrary, and bewildering. It is, simply, how (most) computing should be.
…
All in all, I stand by what I had to say back in January: that the iPad is a beautiful, important, transformative device released under a confusing regime of questionable ethics. That said, I think three simple changes would make a world of difference towards assuaging people’s concerns about the iPad and Apple’s direction.
…

1. Apple should not charge to put applications you’ve written onto your personal iPad (or iPhone, for that matter).
2. Apple should lift restrictions on running interpreted code on its mobile devices. Let people run Basic, Python, and Ruby interpreters on iPad and iPhone.
3. Apple should remove the concept of private APIs from its developer offerings.

In essence, I agree on all three points.

With respect to 1.: I agree that Apple should not charge for putting a build on your own iPad but I can understand why they do. They’re for the certificate and management of same. It’s a casual barrier to entry which most people serious about it can leap over.

But if they permitted interpreted code on the device, which is the essence of 2., then they’re halfway there. Allowing a PHP interpreter, a BASIC compiler or even an environment like MIT’s Scratch would go somewhere to assuraging some of the deep felt geek hurt. A lot of folk I know got their start programming either in BASIC or HyperCard.

Point 3 tells me that Alex doesn’t know how the Apple development environment works. Private APIs are not necessarily secret ways of doing things which cannot be accessed by other mortals due to their secrecy though it does seem to be that way. Private APIs are APIs which are eventually to be made public once they have stabilised or been sufficiently modified. They are commonly APIs which are new or in development. I say ‘commonly’ because Mail and iCal on Mac OS X use them. Even now.

Belfast Metropolitan College have released details of their iPhone course. Starts on the 28th January, and us every Thursday evening for 15 weeks. It costs a mere £68 and is being run by an experienced developer.

See page 22 of the Belfast Met prospectus.

(and yes, if it hadn’t been on a Thursday, I’d have been in there)

From Vinny Coyne, loyal member of XCake, an announcement of his new iPhone Course:

Just a quick announcement that I will be teaching a beginners course in iPhone Development in Newlands Cross, Dublin from 21st to 25th September inclusive. We are also running a competition for two places in the course.

The course will be a healthy mix of theory and lab coding exercises. I’ll be going into the fundamentals of Objective-C and the iPhone SDK, as well as a peek at some of the more complex aspects of iPhone apps.

By the end of the course, candidates will be able to create their own iPhone apps which make the most of the platform’s features (such as location-based services, Google Maps integration, accelerometer functions, web-connectivity, etc) and sell them on the Apple App Store to millions of iPhone & iPod touch users.

Candidates should have experience with at least one object-oriented programming language before attending. Also, an Intel-based MacBook with the iPhone SDK installed will be required. MacBooks can also be rented for the week for an additional fee.

For more information, see iPhone Apps Ireland or download the PDF brochure here.

We’re also running a competition to give away two places at the course for two people currently unemployed.

Register ASAP before you miss your opportunity.

I’ve also been speaking to Vinny about the need for an iPhone course in Belfast. Who’s up for attending that?

This morning I took the kids to our local indoor play park and settled on a chair with a bottle of something diet and started again on my code. This morning’s project was the View Switcher app from Jeff LaMarche and Dave Mark’s Beginning iPhone Development.

But I’m stuck.

I need to resize this blue bit but the size boxes are greyed out. I’m going to have to go and re-read some stuff but I can’t find a way through this.

Argh.

Recently when travelling, I wanted some way to record my location and found that most of the apps out there were designed for hikers or people on trail bikes. I just wanted something simple.

So I figured – an app that grabs your location and with the click of a button, pastes it into an email and allows you to send it to anyone. On launch the app will grab your location and populate the locations beside the two labels. It’ll also open a webview in the opper half to your location in Google Maps.

Yes, it looks like ass.

It’s evident I need to put away Interface Builder and start using pen and paper. Jamie Neely of FRONT explains a little about why you should dump the computer and use pen and paper at a University of Ulster Masterclass they presented earlier this week – he’s applying it to information architecture but it’s the same with design.

I’m going to evolve this app and ‘show my working’ and code on the blog in the ‘code’ category.