Code – Page 3 – ɔimoɈɒ

iPhoneAppsIreland Dublin training course

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 … Continue reading “iPhoneAppsIreland Dublin training course”

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.

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

IB Frustration

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 … Continue reading “IB Frustration”

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.

LocoMail: looks like ass

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 … Continue reading “LocoMail: looks like ass”

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.

invariably…

About a hundred years ago in 1995 I was being taught Modula-2. And I loathed it. One thing I took home from it was to somewhat intelligently name your variables. This is why the Hillegass Cocoa bible is causing some upset for me. They use terms like ‘tableView’ and I’m never sure if these are … Continue reading “invariably…”

About a hundred years ago in 1995 I was being taught Modula-2. And I loathed it.

One thing I took home from it was to somewhat intelligently name your variables.

This is why the Hillegass Cocoa bible is causing some upset for me. They use terms like ‘tableView’ and I’m never sure if these are reserved keywords or if they’re variables. This means you’re groping around in the dark a lot of the time in the hope that you can figure things out. i.e.

-(NSInteger)numberOfRowsInTableView:(NSTableView *)taskList { return [taskStore count]; }
-(id)tableView:(NSTableView *)taskList \ objectValueForTableColumn:(NSTableColumn *)tableColumn \ row:(NSInteger)row { return [taskStore objectAtIndex:row]; }

took me an hour to figure out that where I have ‘taskList’ the book used ‘tableView’ which makes it just harder to understand. The code above still uses one ‘tableView’ but it works. If I replace that with something else, it breaks.

Yes, I am stupid. And a n00b. Sue me.

XCake.org is now back up.

Comment spam is a pain in the butt – to the point that XCake.org ended up with over eight thousand lines of spammer links and crap because I allowed open comments. This overhead caused a huge load on my MySQL server and it affected performance elsewhere so, in the end, it had to go and … Continue reading “XCake.org is now back up.”

Until tonight.

Tonight I trimmed the Comment spam and removed every single comment. I also required a user to be logged in before they can comment. Smart, huh?

So what is XCake?

Well, I’ve covered it before so go have a look.

Syntax Error

Pretty much summed up my lunchtime coding session. XCode seems preternaturally sensitive to hidden control characters so tonight I’m going to have to retype all of the code in my project all over again. I checked it line by line and every { was followed by a corresponding }. Frustrating but part of the learning … Continue reading “Syntax Error”

Pretty much summed up my lunchtime coding session.

XCode seems preternaturally sensitive to hidden control characters so tonight I’m going to have to retype all of the code in my project all over again. I checked it line by line and every { was followed by a corresponding }.

Frustrating but part of the learning process I reckon.

Can’t say NDAnything

Jeff LaMarche writes: After a Cocoa-dev mailing posting by Scott Anguish admonishing someone who was attempting to start an iPhone developer group, I went back and re-read the iPhone NDA. I don’t know if it’s been like this all along, or if one of the changes I agreed to along the way, but apparently, the … Continue reading “Can’t say NDAnything”

Jeff LaMarche writes:

After a Cocoa-dev mailing posting by Scott Anguish admonishing someone who was attempting to start an iPhone developer group, I went back and re-read the iPhone NDA. I don’t know if it’s been like this all along, or if one of the changes I agreed to along the way, but apparently, the NDA restricts you even from talking with other people who are covered by the NDA unless they are an employee or contractor of yours..

NDAs are useful things but they have a very short useful life. The iPhone NDA has been in effect since the SDK went public at the start of the year. There are people who are venting their frustration regarding the NDA (and even talking about the content of the NDA is under NDA). It puts an advantage with those people who have a lot of experience with Cocoa – they’re less likely to need guidance.

It’ll be over soon, people.

XCake.org

The site is up. It’s for people interested in Cocoa and geographically on the Island of Ireland (North and South). http://xcake.org There’s just a Wiki there at the moment. More to come if there’s a perceived need for it. Related posts: XCake 1st Meetup XCake.org is now back up. Dublin XCake.org Meet, Thurs 26th March, … Continue reading “XCake.org”

The site is up. It’s for people interested in Cocoa and geographically on the Island of Ireland (North and South).

http://xcake.org

There’s just a Wiki there at the moment. More to come if there’s a perceived need for it.

Cocoa Days

I’m working my way finally through the Hillegass Cocoa book – but of course my 2nd Edition arrived 4 months ago and I never had the chance to read it and 3rd Edition is out and covers the new XCode so I’m going to be fighting an uphill struggle. I’ll order 3rd Edition after payday. … Continue reading “Cocoa Days”

I find code to be hard. My schedule doesn’t allow for me to be consistent in my approach to learning and so I find myself flailing back and forth, trying to remember the stuff I wrote last time round and spending half my allotted time re-learning. It doesn’t stick much. I’m now convinced I need a mentor to do this who will work through the examples with me, advise me left and right and not get all het up when I’ve had a crap week and didn’t get the chance to sit down and work through examples.

My first problem comes with expectations. If I’m control-dragging connections to the left and right in Interface Builder, I was expecting some code to be generated. Instead I have to manually add these things.

My second problem comes with pre-generated code. It added in an import for UIKit/UIKit.h for some reason – and then when I hit Compile, it burped and complained about UIKit. Claimed it couldn’t find it. To which I say “Well, don’t frigging look at me, you put it in there????” This sort of thing frustrates me -especially when I realise it compiles fine when I change that to Cocoa/Cocoa.h.

Brilliant.

This error has nothing to do with using the 2nd Edition book. It’s a subclass of NSObject which comes with the UIKit.h reference which XCode subsequently has a kitten about. That’s just stupid. So either there’s something wrong with my XCode (entirely possible) or I’m just the worst coder in the world.

I’d say it’s even odds.

[And the result is in. I’m the worst programmer in the world. I’d added a Cocoa Touch NSObject subclass to my Mac application. Cocoa Touch has UIKit.h. Cocoa has Cocoa.h. I feel stupid now but I have to chalk it up to some sort of learning experience.]

No excuse now…

Aaron Hillegass’s Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X is now available on Amazon’s US store. UK store to follow. This coincides nicely with my “Thursday Is Code Night In Bangor” plans. I already have second edition but I’d like third edition because things have changed. That said – even third Edition, though it covers Leopard … Continue reading “No excuse now…”

This, on the other hand, pisses me off. So much for Sterling being stronger than the dollar.

	Amazon.com	Amazon.co.uk	UK price in $
RRP	$49.99	Â£35.99	$70.06
Price	$31.49	Â£28.79	$56.05

Anyway, I digress.

Last night we worked from a different book: Wrox’s Beginning Mac OS X Programming. I don’t have any practical programming experience but I do have a couple of weeks of academic programming (spread across a dozen languages and over 20 years so I effectively know how to say “Hello World” in about 12 languages.) My brother has no programming experience but wants to spend his time constructively rather than sitting around tweaking his wolf.config file for a few extra FPS. We’d scheduled in a one-night-a-week session where we’d get together and learn to write code.

I’d previously considered my options. 50% of my head says to go with PHP or Ruby as they seem to be extremely marketable but I don’t think that I’d be happy with that. I want to make Mac apps and later, iPhone apps. And that realistically means going with Objective-C and Cocoa.

So we spent two hours last night having some fun with compile errors and yeah, it was fun. The material we worked on last night was basic to me but first time knowledge for D. And, to my surprise, at the end, D suggested that we increase this to two nights a week. As I’m in the house on weeknights I’ve been vegging out a lot, reading, writing stuff for lategaming and working through DVDs that I’ve not seen but this new productivity is quite motivating.

We typed in the sample code and then when we got it to compile correctly (the authors deliberately put mistakes in the code!) I suggested a couple of ways we could extend the code which wasn’t in the book and we resolved to do that as homework.

Good times.