Opinion/review about iphone development course by About Objects. Is is worth?

Question

I am thinking about attending this 10 day course by About Objects Inc. http://www.aboutobjects.com/training/iphone_development/iphone_and_ipad_development_super_bundle.html

I have never programmed before and my development skills end with HTML/CSS (if you could call that development). I was wondering if anyone has attended this course and if so, what are your views and do you think it might be worth for a person with my skill level.

It costs about $4K. Money is an issue but for a starter like me will this class give me a good foundation.

Thanks so much.
Dives

Answer 1

Free course on iTunesU CS193p via Stanford taught by Apple employees is a great place to start. Plus all of the WWDC videos are available as free as part of your $99 developer enrollment. There is such a wealth of information available for free it seems quite steep to shell of $4k if you are just trying to get your feet wet. That said I have no knowledge of the course or the provider.

Finally, not to discourage you but you are going to have alot to learn coming from HTML to app development if you have never coded before. You might want to concentrate on some basic Objective-C primers before you even look at the complexities of Cocoa Touch. Having a foundation in objective C and object theory is going to be key in building up your skills.

Good luck and happy studying.

Answer 2

While only you can determine if the money spent on a course is worth it to you, I can provide a few data points to help with your assessment.

The Big Nerd Ranch, known to many Cocoa developers for their excellent bootcamps and great books, has a 7-day Beginning iOS camp for around $4700 right now. They would be one of my first choices for a condensed training course, given how good of a teacher Aaron Hillegass is, along with the rest of their instructors.

The Pragmatic Studio also has a great 4-day iPhone training course for around $2000 taught by Daniel Steinberg and Matt Drance, two instructors I have a lot of respect for. I know several people who have attended this class with no starting iPhone experience that came out feeling they could build and submit an application.

As Nick mentioned, there is a load of great free content out there for learning iPhone development, in addition to many quality books. For a pretty good list of resources, see this question.

Check around at your local university or technical college. Many are starting to add iOS development classes, and these classes tend to be a good deal. For example, the Madison Area Technical College has a semester-long iPhone Apps Development night course for a tuition of around $350. The goal of that course is to take people with some programming background and have them building and running iPhone applications on their devices by the end of the term. I teach the complementary Advanced iPhone Development course there (for which the videos of last semester's class are available on iTunes U for free).