Month: April 2020

Categories
Current Events Programming Reading Material

Did I mention that I’m revising a book that I co-wrote last year?

Cover of “iOS Apprentice, 8th edition”

I may be out of a job, but from now until the end of next week, I do have work: finishing the revision of iOS Apprentice, Eighth Edition, a book that teaches you how to write iPhone and iPad apps, even if you have no prior programming experience.

In its 1200+ pages, the book walks you through building 4 apps:

  1. Bullseye, a simple game where you learn the basics of iOS programming,
  2. Checklists, a “to-do” lists app that teaches you how to make use of table views, one of the most common and useful interface elements,
  3. My Locations, which introduces maps and geolocation in apps,
  4. Store Search, a project that introduces iPad development and which uses networking to search the iTunes Store.

iOS Apprentice is a special book for me, because I learned iOS programming back in 2012 (when the iPhone 4S was the newest model) from an earlier edition. The book launched me into the world of iPhone development, and as a result of that, into the world of mobile and IoT development in general. Since then, I’ve always wanted to repay the book by writing a later edition. Last year, I got my chance when I interviewed to become one of its authors and was chosen.

For a taste of what iOS Apprentice is like, check out this video series below, which is based on the first 8 chapters of the book, which I wrote. It shows you how to get started as an iOS developer by walking you through the process of making Bullseye, a simple game:

You can get your hands on this book in a couple of ways. If you want the paperback edition, you can get it at Amazon.com…

Screen capture of the Amazon.com page for “iOS Apprentice 8th edition”

…and if you want the ebook edition (which comes with free updates, including the one I’m working on right now), you can get it at the RayWenderlich.com site:

I’m also bringing back the Tampa iOS Meetup in the next couple of weeks, where I’ll use the programming exercises in iOS Apprentice as a starting point. If you’ve been meaning to learn iOS programming, keep an eye on Tampa iOS Meetup — it’s coming back!

Are you looking for someone with both strong development and “soft” skills? Someone who’s comfortable either being in a team of developers or leading one? Someone who can handle code, coders, and customers? Someone who can clearly communicate with both humans and technology? The first step in finding this person is to check out my LinkedIn profile.

Categories
Career Editorial Programming

Here’s a bragging right that no other techie has

Now that I’m looking for my next gig (my last one was a victim of COVID-19), it’s time to revive this video that New Relic released a few years back to promote their application monitoring service.

Titled We Love Developers, it features some of the brightest lights in the industry:

  • Matz: Yukihiro Matsumoto, creator of the Ruby programming language
  • Guido van Rossum: Creator of the Python programming language
  • Linus Torvalds: Creator of the Linux operating system and the Git version control system
  • DHH: David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of the Ruby on Rails framework
  • Bill Joy: Co-founder of Sun Microsystems and creator of the vi text editor
  • James Gosling: Lead designer of the Java programming language
  • Sir Tim: Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web
  • Marc Andreesen: Co-creator of Mosaic, the first widely-used web browser, co-founder of Netscape, co-founder of Andreesen Horowitz
  • Woz: Steve Wozniak, creator of Apple
  • Rasmus Lerdorf: Creator of the PHP programming language
  • The Gu: Scott Guthrie, creator of ASP.NET, Executive VP of Microsoft’s Cloud and AI group
  • Sergey Brin: Co-founder of Google
  • Dries Buytaert: Creator of Drupal

At the end of the video, they wanted to use the image of a more “everyman” developer to represent you, their customer. Guessed who they picked:

My photographer friend Adam P. W. Smith (my old business partner; together, we were datapanik software systems and we worked on some pretty interesting projects back in the late ‘90s) took the picture back in August when I was visiting him in Vancouver. I’d arrived a day early for the HackVAN hackathon and was sitting in his kitchen getting some work done when he decided to get a couple of shots. He poured me a glass of scotch, set it on my accordion, which I’d set down on the chair beside me, and started taking pictures.

Are you looking for someone with both strong development and “soft” skills? Someone who’s comfortable either being in a team of developers or leading one? Someone who can handle code, coders, and customers? Someone who can clearly communicate with both humans and technology? The first step in finding this person is to check out my LinkedIn profile.

Categories
Programming Reading Material

Learn iPhone/iPad augmented reality app development with this free tutorial!

If you’re taking advantage of the stay-at-home order to boost your development skills, I have something for you: a FREE tutorial that shows you how to build augmented reality apps for the iPhone and iPad using Apple’s ARKit. This tutorial has a full set of materials: a 97-minute video of the tutorial, a written step-by-step guide for the tutorial, as well as starter and finished code for both tutorial projects.

In the tutorial, you’ll build two apps:

Happy AR Painter: A Bob Ross-themed AR painting app that lets the you use your iPhone or iPad to “paint” in 3D space using geometric shapes that can be animated. Think of it as a much less expensive version of Google’s Tilt Brush!

Raykea: IKEA Place was one of the hottest apps when ARKit first came out. It lets you see what IKEA furniture would look like in your home! Raykea is a similar app that you can build, and you’d be surprised how easy it is to put together (probably easier than putting IKEA furniture together).

Here’s the tutorial video, which was shot at RWDevCon 2018:

And here are the tutorial materials:

Give the tutorial a try, and if you have any questions, feel from to put the in the comments or contact me directly at joey@joeydevilla.com!

Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene (Week of Monday, April 6, 2020)

Hello, Tampa Bay techies, entrepreneurs, and nerds — welcome to another week’s list of area events with your expertise and interests in mind! I hope things for you are going as well as possible given our current situation. As recommended by public health experts and mandated by the mayor and governor, I’m listing only online events for the time being. I’m looking forward to the day when we’ll all be able to meet up in person, but in the meantime, go online and #MakeItTampaBay!

Monday, April 6

Tuesday, April 7

Wednesday, April 8

Thursday, April 9

Friday, April 10

Saturday, April 11

Sunday, April 12

No local online events are listed. This might be a good time to check out Pluralsight’s courses, which are free for the month of April.

Do you have any events or announcements that you’d like to see on this list?

Let me know at joey@joeydevilla.com!

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Categories
Deals Programming Reading Material

Pluralsight’s courses are free for the month of April!

Pluralsight is making its 7,000+ video courses completely free for the month of April! If this is the first time you’ve heard this news, you still have 27-ish days to take advantage of this opportunity.

One of the nicest things about this deal is that you don’t have to provide a credit card number to sign up. They could’ve easily asked for it and counted on you to forget to cancel your account, allowing them to charge you on May 1st. Instead, they’re just letting you create an account with very little info and are hoping that you’ll like your course so much, you’ll choose to become a subscriber in May:

In case you’re curious, here’s a sampling of the Pluralsight courses I’m interested in:

Between the day job at Lilypad and finishing the next version of iOS Apprentice, there’s no way I’m going to be able to do all the courses I want over the month. I’m pretty sure that I’ll play sessions from the conferences in the background while working, and perhaps see what their Unity courses are like.

Be sure to sign up and see if there are any courses that you’d like to take for free!