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offby1 asks: QuestionI’m a relatively new-to-the-mac programmer, interested in exploring the capabilities of Objective-C and Cocoa, among other things. What I’m running into, however, is a dearth of good resources targeted at experienced programmers who just don’t know their way around the Apple world. Is there anything like that out there? If so, where? Also: I’d love to find some of the nicer interface components I see here and there in OSX applications, like the drag+drop wells that CandyBar uses. Is there a good clearinghouse for Cocoa interface components and libraries anywhere? AnswerWhy aren’t you here with us at WWDC? The Apple Worldwide Developer Conference is a yearly event that Apple hosts for just that purpose and just that audience. You have access to pre-release software, sure, but the key is that you get time in labs with Apple engineers and hands-on sessions where they walk you through projects and IDE processes to get you familiar with it. If you’re coding on the Mac, you want to be here. Too bad it’s too late; it started Monday. Since you’re not here, here’s where I go for information when I’m coding:
Various repositories of code:
About Adam Knight
 Author Biography Adam Knight is one of the founders of Mac Geekery and is a geek at heart. Programmer by day, hacker by night, his daily life revolves around the Macintosh platform, which he has been a user and programmer for since the early days of System 7 when his LCII replaced his Apple //c. In-between tech jobs, he’s managed to learn the basics of any web hacker: PHP, MySQL, Perl, Apache, Linux, *BSD, and the intricacies of ./configure —prefix=~/bombshelter/. Today, codepoet is concentrating on blogging again, writing some software for the Mac by himself (including Notae) and for his company (such as Switchblade) and has a few other toys coming out soon. Bug him over AIM or email [link fixed]. |
Ok.. the advice is not so bad, but attending the WWDC is pretty expensive.
I really would love to go to WWDC, but even if I could buy a plane ticket to SF I could not afford the WWDC-Ticket.
If Apple only would make WWDC-sessions available via ADC for all ADC-Members.
Anyway, the links are great….
Apple does make them available, but only for the higher membership levels. Rather than saving up for the trip, then, you could save up for the better membership and get the sessions streamed to you anytime, anywhere. When I joined this year, I watched all of the 2005 sessions before attending the 2006 ones. It’s a lot of information, but it’s invaluable as well.
It is the current state of affairs with Apple that it costs no money to get documentation, but costs a good deal of money to get instruction with that documentation. Really, that’s how it is everywhere, but the distinction is pretty clear with the ADC. Free membership nets you tools and documentation, and a paid membership nets you support incidents and a trip to WWDC.
Not all developers live in the US. Seriously.
It’d cost me easily $10,000 to get to WWDC, that’s a lot of cash. I expect to have that money in the next few years, but it’s not an option that’s open to me while I’m a new player in the mac software world.
So then you get the Premier membership and watch the videos on the ADC site. Shortly after the sessions are over Apple posts the majority (not all) of the sessions to the ADC site for Premier1 members along with the documentation and presentation used in the session (for some). You have access to this for the following year until the next conference.
You don’t need to go to WWDC to go to WWDC. Just get a good membership and the resources are available.
1 This might be available to the lower membership levels, but that’s what I have and what I can guarantee gets it. ADC Developer Relations would have more information on it.
I’ve been a Selected Member 2004/2005. When I subscribed in 2005 I got a DVD with the sessions, which was great… in 2005, there were only streams.. which sucked.
Streams could be make available to free members too. Well ok, not those confidential ones, but the others.
I remember that CoreData-Video-Tutorial on ADC few month back.. that was awesome… we should get more of that.
I’m totaly with Abhi Beckert, a trip to the WWDC would cost me a lot of money and as I’m currently to small even a Premier-Membership is too much for me… actualy also the Select-Membership.
For someone who just started in Mac-Business, the ADC stuff is a bit pricey.
It seems a little unfair that the Leopard preview was provided only to developers at WWDC. I couldn’t attend this year for a variety of reasons; in years past if Apple gave developers something at WWDC there was a copy in the mail to those who weren’t present.
Now those folks that were there have a leg up on coding for 10.5 that I’m still waiting to get!
Pay to play inherently sucks for its financial elitism. But then, that’s what Apple’s all about! g=
Hi. I’m JongAm Park, a Korean developer. I would like to start by [self introduce:briefly].
I have written codes on Mac from when I was a freshman as well as on Windows and Unix. I live in LA and attended the WWDC two times because Apple Inc. invited me. I write codes on the Windows at work and also on Mac when I go back home.
Actually this is good question. I asked the same question several times to me, and I got curious what others think about this issue.
For the beginner who want to get familiar to Mac dev society, I would recommend to attend the WWDC. It has warm feeling, and people there are nice. So, people can talk each other and share information.
The next step. If people get used to Apple’s documentation, and subscribe the mailing list, and search some blogs with the help of the Google, they can probably find most of the questions on “How to solve this….?” The general session at the WWDC doesn’t help to resolve your curiosity and the fee is expensive. Also, it can be not so easy to ask vacation to your manager especially when it is busy time. About this time, it is usually busy for me.
If people can afford, I would recommend to attend Hand-On-Session and some sessions in which you can grab Apple’s programmers and ask questions to them. It would be very helpful if people have their current project in their notebook computers. All this will make attenders feel like “Oh… I’m actively involved in this WWDC! and learn something which can justify the fare for flight and hotel”.
Oh.. one more thing. Usually the title of the session really doesn’t explain what they are going to handle in the session.
Well.. let’s say that it is “Objective-C 2.0”, I would expect their brief summary on what is new and provide some presentation which will make people get used to the new features of the Objective-C 2.0. However, they explain things in detail too much, and that’s it. Often, it is better to show example code rather than explain it in length text. Also it would be better to enlarge the fonts or magnify screen. I couldn’t read them! Programmers are supposed to have bad eye-sight!
(This is just example how the sessions are going on generally. )
OK. Enjoy this year’s WWDC. Due to the iPhone SDK, I guess there can be something interesting there.