Last month I attended "iPhone Bootcamp", a 5-day intensive programming class done by the folks at Big Nerd Ranch. I'd read good things about their classes, particularly the Cocoa Bootcamp; if I'd been able to afford it, I would have done both. But at $3500 per class (which does include room and board for a week), I had to pick just one, so the iPhone class was it.

It actually worked out pretty well for me that way. I bought Aaron's book, Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, back in May, and spent much of the summer working through it. I found learning Cocoa to be hard; sometimes it'd take me a whole week to work through one chapter. But I wanted to take my time and be sure I really understood it. (Arguably this process might have gone faster if I'd gone to the Cocoa class, but then again I might just have been lost. we'll never know.) :)

So by the time the iPhone class rolled around, I felt comfortable with Objective-C and with XCode. I'd also messed around with the iPhone SDK; had looked at Apple's example code and had even tried writing some apps of my own. (Though I hadn't gotten very far; I was still pretty confused about a lot of things.)

We got a spiral-bound book full of info and examples on most every aspect of iPhone programming, from text handling to view controllers to advanced stuff like OpenGL and Core Animation. Our instructor, Joe Conway, would lecture a bit on each chapter, then we'd have time to work on the example code from that chapter. (And each chapter also had some challenge projects to do, if you finished up the example code in time.) Joe was great about helping out if you got stuck or had questions on anything.

Classes ran from 9am to 6:30pm each day (9am to 12:30pm on Friday), with breaks at 12:30 for lunch, and a mid-afternoon break. You could also return after dinner and work on code; Joe stayed in the lab for several hours each evening helping anyone who had questions. (Admittedly I didn't take as much advantage of this as I should have, but after sitting in a chair for 8+ hours, I was usually more than ready to go kick back in my room.)

So, was it worth it? Yes, absolutely. The class made things a lot clearer for me. I got good experience by writing lots of code (and I got to see lots of errors, too, so I'm starting to recognize just what those cryptic error messages mean now). ;) I got good examples from the book, and learned how to do stuff I'd not done before. In particular the discussion of view controllers was great. And we learned (and got plenty of experience with) how to install apps on our phones.

Anyway, if you're wanting to learn iPhone programming and can muster the funds to go, I definitely recommend it. And in theory, once you *do* learn, you'll be able to sell apps on the store and recoup the cost of the class. (Though I'm still working on that part of the evil plan...) :)