There is a Zen saying: “When the pupil is ready, the master will appear.”

Kickoff of the Flatiron School iOS Course

Today is Day 1 for me of the Inaugural iOS Course at the Flatiron School.

For me this could not have come at a more perfect time.  

I had finished Stanford’s excellent CS193P which are posted on iTunes U just in time for WWDC and iOS 7 and then having iOS 7 become a reality it was time to dive in to something more than a five day Big Nerd Ranch style course.  Way more. The auto-didactic self-taught portion of me resisted going into a program but thinking I could continue on my own was the wrong approach as I now felt this only perpetuates this working alone mindset where bad habits can go unnoticed.  I felt it was time to join a team and the 10-week program at Flatiron seemed like the right thing.  In a group working with others I feel as I can learn more in 10 weeks than I could by myself in 10 months.

Day 1 consisted of just jumping into a team and coding in Xcode 5 an AboutMe app with a segmented control, labels, UIImage, and buttons in iOS 7 while working in a GitHub repo.  The only thing missing here would have been an AppStore submission.

After lunch (yes – all the above was just the morning) we dove into lectures on Git (doing the CodeSchool Course) and AutoLayout with a second App touching on the finer points of AutoLayout in Xcode 5 (note: I need to watch Session 406 of this year’s WWDC 2013 Videos the one entitled “Taking Control of Auto Layout in Xcode 5” with Kevin Cathey and Tony Ricciardi).

With such an explosive start to the program I can’t wait for Day 2.