Anyone else hate not being a programmer?

mpbiz said:
Bump.

I spent 30 minutes a couple of days ago reading posts on stackoverflow and quora looking for more iOS and Objective-C resources and learning materials.

Someone on Quora recommended this: Ray Wenderlich | Tutorials for iPhone / iOS Developers and Gamers

I ended up opting in to their newsletter and downloading the first tutorial in a series they've created called "iOS Apprentice".

After only going through a small portion of the PDF tons of lightbulbs started going off for me in regards to Objective-C. In the previous obj-c video course I was taking, and in the big nerd ranch book, a lot of the Objective-C stuff just wasn't clicking for me.

There is something special about that first iOS Apprentice tutorial. The author does a great job, includes illustrations. Everything is explained very simply and I learned a lot more about Objective-C syntax.

I completed that first tutorial in the series, and purchased the bundle today. Will be starting the 2nd one on Wednesday and my goal is to have it finished by Wednesday night.

I'm very excited to make it to the 3rd tutorial in the series because it is supposed to teach you a lot more about Objective-C and claims that by the end of it you should be able to make some apps on your own with little to no help.

Going to start the 3rd tutorial Saturday morning and try and have it done by Monday afternoon.

I'm no longer completely lost with Objective-C and the syntax is starting to make a lot more sense to me now.

If anyone else is interested in learning iOS programming then I highly recommend you check out the ray wenderlich tutorials.
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As you can tell from my posts I am no expert but ... have you considered phonegap?
 


Following some kind help and advice from absolute I spent a couple of hours going through the laravel intro videos, which definitely created some wtf moments!

As far as I can tell laravel is something like an abstraction layer on top of PHP? The code examples don't look much like PHP at all, though they are minimalist examples.

I can see how it would make building stuff faster, once you got into the swing of it, but gut feel says there will be a performance overhead somewhere.

I presume you integrate laravel with JQuery e.g. for client-sde validation, AJAX etc.
 
wezcountry said:
Following some kind help and advice from absolute I spent a couple of hours going through the laravel intro videos, which definitely created some wtf moments!

As far as I can tell laravel is something like an abstraction layer on top of PHP? The code examples don't look much like PHP at all, though they are minimalist examples.

I can see how it would make building stuff faster, once you got into the swing of it, but gut feel says there will be a performance overhead somewhere.

I presume you integrate laravel with JQuery e.g. for client-sde validation, AJAX etc.
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When you use a framework, generally speaking you sacrifice a small amount of performance for a huge increase in productivity in terms of development & code maintenance time.

If you want to maximise performance then everything you write is going to be procedural.

Generally speaking modern hardware is fast enough that the performance decrease isn't going to be a problem (or even noticeable) for anyone that isn't running a Facebook style infrastructure. Even at that size, they go with compiling the code to improve performance, rather than stripping out frameworks and other things which make a code base easier to maintain.

With stuff like AWS, processing power is dirt cheap anyway. It's often cheaper to add an extra node than it is to re-write a large swathe of code.

(Not to say that performance doesn't matter, but things like well written framework overheads are minor.. You still want to avoid doing stupid O(n^3) stuff or whatever.)
 
wezcountry said:
I can see how it would make building stuff faster, once you got into the swing of it, but gut feel says there will be a performance overhead somewhere.
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In places where performance is really an issue (complex background data processing algorithms or w/e) I personally write them in python (seriously... python is so good it's like writing pseudo code!) and then re-write using C++ and compile if need be. But this is very very rare.
 
wezcountry said:
As you can tell from my posts I am no expert but ... have you considered phonegap?
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Phonegap is the lazy man's way and from what little research I've done their apps often experience performance issues and have trouble getting approved for the App Store.

My main goal with this is to become a REAL iOS developer. I want to know my objective-c inside and out so that I can create any app I want to, and also would like to be able to use my skills to gain employment or a steady stream of clients.

None of the above would be be achievable by cutting corners and using something like phonegap.
 
I need to give some ideas to my family for gifts to get me for Christmas. Still plugging away at PHP, planning to start on my first real project after Christmas. But as for the gifts, I'd like to get a few good programming books (not really language specific, more about designing code, structure, planning, etc.). The concepts that separate a programmer and a good developer.

Any recommendations? I saw someone mention this book earlier in the thread: [ame="http://www.amazon.ca/Code-Complete-Steve-McConnell/dp/0735619670/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1387348069&sr=1-1&keywords=code+complete"]Code Complete: Steve McConnell: 0790145196705: Books - Amazon.ca[/ame]

If there's any books you feel are must have for PHP or MYSQL book, feel free to recommend those as well.

Thanks everyone.
 
kingrage said:
I need to give some ideas to my family for gifts to get me for Christmas. Still plugging away at PHP, planning to start on my first real project after Christmas. But as for the gifts, I'd like to get a few good programming books (not really language specific, more about designing code, structure, planning, etc.). The concepts that separate a programmer and a good developer.

Any recommendations? I saw someone mention this book earlier in the thread: Code Complete: Steve McConnell: 0790145196705: Books - Amazon.ca

If there's any books you feel are must have for PHP or MYSQL book, feel free to recommend those as well.

Thanks everyone.
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POEAA.jpg
 
kingrage said:
Cool. How advanced is it?

Will add it to my list. Thanks man.
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Definitely nothing for a pure beginner. But if you work through this list here php - MVC For advanced developers - Stack Overflow you should be ready when you get to the end.

And don't focus on a single persistence solution like MySQL. You need to pick the right tool for the job. When you build your application properly and use the data mapper pattern from PoEEA, then you can easily change between persistence solutions anyways.

And don't just go with MySQL because it's popular, also have a look at PostgreSQL if you want a relational DB. But chances are you might not even need one, so have a look at the NoSQL solutions too.

But that's all just a small implementation detail when you build your app properly. I usually work with mock data in my mappers until pretty late in the project before I decide on a persistence solution.
 
hehejo said:
Definitely nothing for a pure beginner. But if you work through this list here php - MVC For advanced developers - Stack Overflow you should be ready when you get to the end.

And don't focus on a single persistence solution like MySQL. You need to pick the right tool for the job. When you build your application properly and use the data mapper pattern from PoEEA, then you can easily change between persistence solutions anyways.

And don't just go with MySQL because it's popular, also have a look at PostgreSQL if you want a relational DB. But chances are you might not even need one, so have a look at the NoSQL solutions too.

But that's all just a small implementation detail when you build your app properly. I usually work with mock data in my mappers until pretty late in the project before I decide on a persistence solution.
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Hmm.. alright. Thanks for the resources. I need to do some more reading on the differences between databases and their applications. I honestly know nothing about all that shit. Thanks again for sharing that shit. Lots to read, learn and try to understand.
 
Recommending Folwer? Really?

Sorry, but that guy can not write his way out of a paper bag.
I know people hate me for my "academic" style and I do like me some boring books, but his books just put me to sleep immediately.

::emp::
 
kingrage said:
Actually, I don't think I even have an MySQL book. Anything anyone can recommend for getting started? Still essentially a beginner with working with databases.
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If you want to learn how to design a database that is not specific to MySQL, you need something like (or look for a previous version):
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Database-Systems-Implementation-Management-Essential/dp/1111969604"]Database Systems: Design, Implementation, and Management (with Premium WebSite Printed Access Card and Essential Textbook Resources Printed Access Card): Carlos Coronel, Steven Morris, Peter Rob: 9781111969608: Amazon.com: Books[/ame]


For MySQL (I like the Murach books):
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Murachs-MySQL-Joel-Murach/dp/1890774685"]Murach's MySQL: Joel Murach: 9781890774684: Amazon.com: Books[/ame]


[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Database-Systems-Implementation-Management-Essential/dp/1111969604"][/ame]
 
Programming is not that important unless you want to be a professional developer. The folks I know that make the most money don't code for shit.

Most of the time I can code it myself if it's simple php,html,javascript using pre-existing scripts and simple modifications

other simple coding tasks can be outsourced for very cheap

As far as Blackhat automation is concerned, by the time I get a custom script made the underlying method usually no longer works. Doing it by hand saves me money even if it means some extra labor.

Even if you become good at coding it would seem like you would still need a good idea and it seems like everything has been done to death.
 
absolute said:
Good luck mpbiz! Loads of iOS gigs out there. Don't lose the momentum and you'll do good.
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Thanks and yeah I'm excited because from the research I've done iOS skills are in very high demand, pay well, and there's a higher barrier to entry because it's not as easy as something like PHP for example.

Any chance you're an iOS programmer?

And yeah trying very hard to keep up this pace. Today is the 21st day and I've clocked in over 74 hours. There are still major parts of objective-c that I don't fully understand yet, so I started going through some tutorials on thenewboston to fill in the gaps.

I'm definitely starting to experience burn out though. I can do a solid 2-3 hours but then I need to take 30 minutes to an hour to clear my head.

I'll have another update later tonight. These newboston tutorials are really good and some of the objective-c things that were confusing me are starting to make sense now.
 
got mad few days ago even though I will always hire a programmer I just wanted to make my own self-automated apps aaand make things easier so I've started with python, always wanted that scraping-lang
 
Bump.

Got in a solid 9 hours today. Went through most of the newboston objective-c videos and that helped fill in a lot of gaps. I took a bunch of notes and created flash cards with code examples in Anki which is a really cool spaced repetiton software.

I'll be adding more and more notes, questions, and code examples to this software as I continue learning. I plan on going through these flash cards for 20-30 minutes every day whenever I need a quick break.

I also got about half way through a checklist app tutorial today.

Objective-C really though is still confusing as hell to me. I would say I'm 60% there, but sometimes I'm looking at example code and I'm just like "WTF is going on here?"

For the most part, I can now look at code and pick out the classes, the pointers, the objects, the methods, the arguments being passed, etc. but here is my main problem and maybe you guys can offer some help with this....

Although I can pick apart the code and name all of the different pieces and understand what role they play, I can only do this when I am given an example block of code like in a tutorial for example.

But when I sit down and try to think about how I would do an application on my own I get lost. I no longer have the step by step tutorial and don't have the example to go off of.

I feel like maybe I need to just say fuck it, ditch all of the tutorials and books, and just open xcode now that I know some basics and bang something simple out completely on my own.

Maybe even something similar to a tutorial app I have completed, but only refer back to the tutorial when I am completely lost?

What do you guys think about that?

I'm also thinking about opening 2 xcode projects, one with a tutorial's completed source code and another one completely blank, putting them right next to each other on the screen and then just typing out the blocks of code from the finished version over and over and over again.

Do you guys think that would just be useless repetition, or do you think it will help create muscle memory?

I would really appreciate your opinions on the above 2 methods.

I'm at a point right now where I'm very frustrated, but not giving up. I am going to do this, but I also want to make sure I am utilizing my time wisely and employing the best learning strategy.

Thanks for the help.
 
I realize the above is a long ass post, but I would REALLY appreciate your opinions on the 2 possible learning methods that I'm thinking about using.
 
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