iOS Development Beginnings

Now that I’ve purchased a Macbook Pro (again), I’m diving into iOS development. I’ve decided to keep my notes as I go along, here on the blog. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s for raw public consumption, but that’s ok since this blog is primarily for selfish reasons. Perhaps someone will get something out of it.

I’m starting off by running through the official Apple documentation on getting started here:  link

Cocoa Touch is the framework which iOS apps are built on. Cocoa is the framework which Mac OS X apps are built on. It’s an MVC architecture in both cases.

According to Wikipedia, Cocoa Touch is composed of the following sub-frameworks:

• Foundation Kit Framework
• UIKit Framework (based on Application Kit)
• Game Kit Framework
• iAd Framework
• Map Kit Framework

In this first chapter, the following are some mental mappings I’ve made to my previous knowledge of other languages/frameworks/patterns. There is no 100% mapping exactly, but these are close.

• ‘protocol’ == ‘interface’
• ‘app delegate’ == ‘message handler’

The general theme I’m seeing as I go through the first chapter is that this is a message based architecture, similar to a bus, with message handlers (delegates). The delegation can pass the messages along. This is of course very high level and will require refinement as I go along.

How do you measure programmer productivity?

How do you measure programmer productivity?

When the Lisa team was pushing to finalize their software in 1982, project managers started requiring programmers to submit weekly forms reporting on the number of lines of code they had written. Bill Atkinson thought that was silly. For the week in which he had rewritten QuickDraw’s region calculation routines to be six times faster and 2000 lines shorter, he put “-2000″ on the form. After a few more weeks the managers stopped asking him to fill out the form, and he gladly complied.