05.24
Confessions of an iPhone Application Developer
It’s a new year so I am updating some training information in a format to share on the internet. Whether I do consulting at a company, or brown bad lunch training or help a friend startup a small business I always am into training, coaching and mentoring.
Areas include:
1) Small Business. Tips for getting started and marketing a small 1 or 2 person startup.
2) Consulting. Hey, the best money is business to business. So this is key and fun and umm… pays real well.
3) Application Development. iPhone is my current favorite, but other platforms as well. They teach how to code in school, but working in the real world is so much more than that… working with a team, checking in code, the life cycle development process and now days even some outsourcing.
1) Find a Google Wave invite. Go to: http://twitter.com/#search?q=google%20wave%20invite and find a real person who is giving out invites and ask! Do not pay! Do not ask from something that looks like a SPAM or form-letter. Do not ask Google directly (maybe someday, but right now they only give them through existing wave users)
2) Search all public waves: with:public (And add a keyword if you want to refine this like with:public iphonedev )
3) Make a Wave Public. To make a wave public, right now the easiest work-around is to add this address to your contacts: easypublic@appspot.com then add this user to your wave.
4) Click in a Wave and then press control-E to edit that wave.
5) To get it to work on an iPhone type in this link: (Don’t buy the $.99 app it is just a browser with below link!)
6) Add derekbeda to your contacts. Especially if you are into iPhone Development or a fellow Entrepreneur.
Here is a position I helped post and fill for a company I worked for.
iPhone Developer for Team iPhone
Company has an immediate need for iPhone Developers
Responsibilities:
* Responsible for coding and development iPhone native applications
* Collaborate with a team to create front-end designs
* Manage projects from concept to delivery
Requirements:
* Full life cycle development including unit testing and build/deployment
* Experience in Objective-C
* Knowledge with XCode
* Familiarity with iPhone SDK
* Strong written and verbal skills
Additional Skills:
* Experience in C or C++
* Knowledge in Agile, Scrum, QA Life Cycle
* Practice with XHTML/HTML, JavaScript, CSS, XML or other web technologies
If you are interested in this position, please send your resume to hr@psios.com highlighting specific relevant experience and hourly rate requirements. No phone calls please.
Here are some Software Development questions:
How old were you when you started programming? I was 16 when I had my first exposure in school. 21 when I had my first job writing a utility for a project.
How did you get started in programming? I took a night class at IBM and and loved the challenge of looking at problems and solving them.
What was your first language? Wrote a modem communications program in C Language. What was the first real program you wrote?
At Apple I wrote a test program that tested all the printer commands but the second version was much more advanced testing modem functionality which got me into Modem Communications where I worked on a few Modem Application for some smaller startups.
What languages have you used since you started programming? Think Pascal & C; Turbo C/C++; MPW Pascal & C/C++; CodeWarrior C/C++; NewtonScript; Visual Studio Basic, C/C++; Perl, Flash ActionScript; Eclipse Java; Xcode C, C++, Objective-C
What was your first professional programming gig? I left Apple Computers as a Permanent employee to work at a small startup for a year. Before that I only did part-time projects.
If you knew then what you know now, would you have started in programming? Absolutely! But I never would of left it like I did a few times. I was a Sys Admin on a project, and then did some WhiteBox texting, Functional Automated Testing (all C, C++, Visual Basic still). But I always enjoyed Software Development more than all my other ‘industry’ jobs.
What was the most fun you ever had programming? Hard to isolate this to a single time as there were 4 times in my career. (1) The first time I was at Apple (I later returned 3 times as a Consultant). as an employee where I taught myself first Pascal then later C and wrote utilities for several projects I was working on. (2) After I left Apple my first time I was full-time working on projects for Macintosh, Dos, Windows. (3) Wrote some projects in Flash Actionscript the most fun was a CDROM project. (4) Most recently now I am back working on a product from Apple, but this time Xcode and iPhone I have the most fun when I am challenged with a problem and then research, read to figure out the best way to solve and implement the solution.
Welcome to Psios.
I have worked in the software development industry for over 15 years as employee, contractor or consultant, with such major corporations as Apple, Oracle and Cisco and a dozen small startups as well. The best part of my career and being an entrepreneur is working with new technologies and new companies every year. In the past this ranged from being an Applications Developer working on projects that ran on the Mac OS and sometimes I confess Windows. This time I am back to Apple and Applications Development, but this time working as an iPhone Applications Developer & Interface Designer as well as a Trainer.
Thank you!