Afterword - iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide (2014)

iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide (2014)

29. Afterword

Welcome to the end of the book! You should be very proud of all your work and all that you have learned. Now there is good news and bad news:

· The good news: The stuff that leaves programmers befuddled when they come to the iOS platform is behind you now. You are an iOS developer.

· The bad news: You are probably not a very good iOS developer.

What to do Next

It is now time to make some mistakes, read some really tedious documentation, and be humbled by the heartless experts who will ridicule your questions. Here is what we recommend:

Write apps now. If you do not immediately use what you have learned, it will fade. Exercise and extend your knowledge. Now.

Go deep. This book has consistently favored breadth over depth; any chapter could have been expanded into an entire book. Find a topic that you find interesting and really wallow in it – do some experiments, read Apple’s docs on the topic, read a posting on a blog or on StackOverflow.

Connect. There is an iOS Developer Meetup in most cities, and the talks are surprisingly good. There are discussion groups online. If you are doing a project, find people to help you: designers, testers (AKA guinea pigs), and other developers.

Make mistakes and fix them. You will learn a lot on the days when you say, “This application has become a ball of crap! I’m going to throw it away and write it again with an architecture that makes sense.” Polite programmers call this refactoring.

Give back. Share the knowledge. Answer a dumb question with grace. Give away some code.

Shameless Plugs

You can find all of us on Twitter, where we keep you informed about programming and entertained about life: @aaronhillegass, @cbkeur and @joeconwaystk.

Keep an eye out for future guides from Big Nerd Ranch. We also offer week-long courses for developers. And if you just need some code written, we do contract programming. For more information, visit our website at http://www.bignerdranch.com/.

It is you, dear reader, who makes our lives of writing, coding, and teaching possible. So thank you for buying our book.