NSCoderNight Washington DC tonight
NSCoderNight Washington DC is meeting again tonight, July 8, 2008 at 7pm - 10pm.
We meet every week on Tuesday nights.
Tonight we’re discussing Chapter 5 of Cocoa Programming for Mac OSX Third Edition by Aaron Hillegass.
We meet at La Madeleine Bethesda, MD.
And more info:
7607 Old Georgetown Road, Bethesda 20814
Old Georgetown & Commerce
TEL: 301-215-9142
Mon. - Thu. 6:30 AM - 10:00 PM
Fri. - Sat. 6:30 AM - 11:00 PM
Sun. 7:00 AM - 10:00 PM
And parking info:
Go past La Madeleine and either turn right onto Old Georgetown Road or
continue onto Georgetown Road.
Turn left onto Woodmont Ave.
Make a left turn into the parking garage.
Take the elevator up to the ground floor.
Cross the street and there is La Madeleine.
And don’t forget to validate your parking ticket with La Madeleine -
they’ll pay for the first hour.
New Programming Language Group forming in Northern Virginia
I don’t know what it is about Northern Virginia and programming languages, but we just can’t seem to get enough of them! A new group “novalanguages” has just formed.
Here’s a brief description of the group:
Thoughts on the makeup of the group include obtaining (however you want) a book,
working through the book 1 chapter per week on one night of that week with a group of
like minded individuals. For the first one, my company Iterative Designs will sponsor it (not sure what that means just yet) and we can go from there.It will mean meeting up and having a group to ask questions about the language we are learning and they aren’t going to give you the snub nose responses of “Don’t you know that — you n00b” that you might get in an IRC chat room.
I am thinking the first language should be something out there but semi-applicable (like an Erlang, Smalltalk, or even Lisp). Unless everyone in the group has a Mac (or can borrow one) and we can learn Cocoa/Obj-C — which would be fun given the iPhone SDK availability.
Personally, I’d be happy to learn Erlang. Chad’s been talking about it for awhile now and I got really excited about the potential of it while at MountainWest RubyConf where I saw some good presentations about it.
I’d also be interested in going through Cocoa/Objective-C. I already know it, but its always good to go back through the basics and practice, practice, practice. Plus, it’s also good to share your knowledge with others - teaching is sometimes the best way to deeply ingrain something into your brain. However, we’re already planning to go through the Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, 3rd ed book in our NSCoder DC Night group.
Thanks to Chris Williams for setting this up!
NSCoderNight tonight in Northern Virginia
I’ve been going to the past few NSCoderNights here in Northern Virginia. We’ve met up at Panera in Tysons before (look for the Apple logos.) But tonight we’re trying a different venue: Camille’s Sidewalk Cafe near the Courthouse Metro in Clarendon, VA. More details in Jose’s blog entry Trying a new location tonite.
It’s been pretty motivating to meet up with other Cocoa Mac and iPhone developers. I think we’re going to be discussing Cocoa Programming with Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass soon, working our way through the chapters. I was privileged to have the experience of doing technical review on that book and I’ll have a full review of it on this blog soon. Short review: if you have the 1st or 2nd edition, it will help you get caught up to the newer Cocoa APIs and so its worth getting. If you don’t, then you definitely need this book to help you with your Cocoa programming. Big Nerd Ranch uses it as a text book for their Cocoa Bootcamps!
Cocoa / Washington DC Trivia: Aaron Hillegass grew up in Northern Virginia. We actually attended the same high school, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, though at different times.
2007 Training in Review
Last year I took a lot of training. In the past, my employers would usually send me to one training event. Sometimes I would get to go to two if times were good. Other times, there was no training budget.
In 2007, I was self-employed as the sole member of Happy Apps LLC. So being in charge of the training budget (well actually the entire budget), I went to six training events:
- Rails Edge in Reston, VA
- Advanced Rails in Chicago, IL
- WWDC in San Francisco, CA
- RailsConf in Portland, OR
- Advanced Ruby in Reston, VA
- RubyConf in Charlotte, NC
So that’s 2 Ruby conferences, 3 Rails conferences, and one Cocoa conference. I actually was scheduled to go to another Cocoa conference, C4[1] over in Chicago, but had to cancel due to personal reasons.
So which ones were good and which ones were bad? I think they were all quite good. Obviously, if you want to make Mac applications like I do with WebnoteHappy, you’ll want to go WWDC.
In terms of being a good Ruby on Rails developer, I’d have to say that assuming that you already have a good background in object-oriented programming and web development, have worked through a beginning Rails book like Agile Web Development with Rails, then you really should take both the Advanced Ruby course by Pragmatic Studio, followed by the Advanced Rails course. Both taught me quite a lot of things that I hadn’t known before.
Once you’ve got that though, I think its important to keep up with the latest in techniques and also be involved in your programming community. I think The Rails Edge Conference is top notch in keeping up with what’s new in the Rails world. I hope that a date is announced soon though - I don’t see one for 2008 as of today.
RailsConf is also good for keeping up with Rails, but I think is maybe even better for just being involved in the Rails community. There were a lot of opportunities, scheduled and unscheduled, to get together with fellow RoR developers and you could sense that Rails is really changing the way that web development is being done.
RubyConf on the other hand reminded me that Ruby is not just about Rails. There’s certainly been a lot of growth of Ruby use because of Rails, but there is a deep and wide pool of talent that has fallen in love with Ruby. It was interesting to see all the different uses that people have made of Ruby. And it was definitely an honor and a pleasure to meet Matz in person. In the end, it does seem like most people who are doing Ruby full-time are making their money with Rails.
I’m trying to plan out my training in 2008 now. So I’m curious to hear what good conferences or classes other people went to in 2007. Also if there were any bad ones.
DC Cocoa Meetup July 15th
Hey all - I’ve been away on vacation. But we’re having a Cocoa Meetup in DC this Sunday July 15th. Here’s all the details:
DC Cocoa Meetup
Sunday, July 15, 2007
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Java Shack
2507 N. Franklin Rd.
Arlington, Virginia 22201
If you’re in DC and you’re doing Mac programming, I hope to see you there!
MashPit + CocoaDevHouse at MWSF 2007
Blake told me about this event and it really makes me wish I was at Macworld right about now. Looks like a unique event that discusses and hacks together Hybrid Apps, specifically Cocoa apps that talk to open web APIs.
Here’s the details of MashPit + CocoaDevHouse at MWSF 2007:
Mash Pit is a Barcamp-inspired, hackfest for collaborating on solving human problems with open APIs, open source and web-based technology.
For this Macworld-week event we’re adding a healthy dose of Apple’s Cocoa frameworks and Mac hardware hacking in addition to discussions of web service mashups, open authentication and such.
DC Mac Programmer Meeting - February 23rd
Calling all Mac programmers in the DC area! We’re going to have the first DC Mac Programmer Meeting of 2006. (We last met in November, which I’ll have a recap of later.) And when I say we, I mean the Programming SIG of the Washington Apple Pi, the area’s largest Apple user group.
We’re meeting on February 23rd, which is Thursday at 7:30pm at the Booz, Allen, and Hamilton (BAH) building at 8283 Greensboro Drive in McLean, VA. The main entrance is near the “u” of “Solutions Drive” in the Google Map below. (Hint: use the Hybrid view to see what I’m talking about.) If you get there late, we’ll leave a note with the security guards where we are.
But even better…a bunch of us are going to grab some dinner at 6:30pm at the Panera off of Route 7 near Tysons Corner. Hopefully we’ll have some nice wireless access. Not sure what to look for… probably a bunch of guys wearing black Apple t-shirts and aluminum PowerBooks.
Here’s a Google map that starts at the Panera and ends at the Booz building.
If anyone needs to come via Metro, I’m going to pick up someone there at the West Falls Church Metro. Actually that person is Colin, who helps develop the open source multi-IM client, Adium.
If you’re coming, please RSVP with me at comment at luisdelarosa.com.
Cocoa Search Engine
If you’re programming in Cocoa, Brian Cooke created a custom search engine for Cocoa using Rollyo that searches the main places you look for Cocoa answers. Its pretty handy.
Mac Programmer Meeting in Northern Virginia - November 17th
We’re having a meeting of the Programming SIG of the Washington Apple Pi, which is the big local Mac users group in the area.
It should be fun. The group started rewriting a Cocoa app using Core Data and Bindings that we use for raffling off prizes at the user group meetings. It’s called…Raffler. What’d you expect? iRaffle?
Details:
What: A Bunch of Mac Guys Hacking Away on Cocoa and other stuff on PowerBooks
Where: 13161 Fox Hunt Lane, Herndon, VA
When: Thursday, November 17th, at 6:45pm
How to get in: RSVP with me via the email link in the upper left corner of my blog. I’ll tell you about the secret handshake.
Finally found a DC Mac Programming Group
Last week, I finally found a DC Mac Programming Group. It is the Programming SIG of the Washington Apple Pi (WAP), which is the big Mac Users Group in the area. We met over in Reston, VA in a _really_ nice club house room with a big projection screen that hooked up to our PowerBooks. The chairs were plush and comfortable. Only thing missing was soft drinks and pizza (like we have at the NOVAJUG.)
We talked about all sorts of technologies from Cocoa to Python to SQLite to AppleScript. We presented some code and showed off some apps. All good stuff. In today’s age, where you can connect with experts from around the world, I still think there is a good place for talking with people who share your passion in person.
We meet every 4th Thursday of each month. So if you’re programming on a Mac, come on by! Email me for more info.