Mike Clark

Folks often ask me how I got into iPhone development, where they should start, and which resources I recommend. To be honest, I usually kinda stumble my way through new things rather than taking a guided approach. But the iPhone learning curve was a little different for me. It was literally a multi-year process of learning blocks of the development stack: Objective-C, Cocoa, Xcode, Interface Builder, and so on. It was mostly just for fun, although I ended up writing several articles for Apple along the way. What I didn't know was that the journey would eventually reach a crescendo with iPhone development.

So how do you get into iPhone development? Well, that depends. If you're a seasoned C programmer, your starting point will be different from someone new to programming. But both of you will wind up learning object-oriented programming to use the Cocoa Touch libraries. And perhaps you'll even discover that programming isn't for you. That's ok. There are plenty of good iPhone programmers you can team up with to help turn your idea into an application. Everyone approaches the learning curve from a different perspective. There is no "right" way for everyone.

That being said, a general roadmap with a few landmarks might still be useful. So, based on my experience and what I've heard from students of our iPhone course, I've put together an iPhone Developer's Roadmap.

It opens with some pointers to help you find a suitable place to begin your journey. Then, for each general stage, you'll find definitions for common lingo and resources to help you dig deeper. And what can I say: I'm a little biased. You'll find a few Pragmatic choices in there, both free and those that support an author. But I also mention other resources that I've found valuable. It's not meant to be a comprehensive collection of all the fine resources out there. So please treat all these as jumping off points.

Enjoy, and welcome to developing on the iPhone!

Nothing re-energizes the developer in me like a good conference, and the long nap afterwards. And whaddaya know, it's conference season:

• RailsConf: It's hard to believe this is the fourth RailsConf! Things have come a long way, but one thing has remained constant: The Rails community is a melting pot of great people. (OK, some take longer to thaw than others.) I love the diversity of this crowd, and I'm looking forward to learning from them once again this year. I'm going to try to share some of the work I've been doing with iPhone and Rails, too. If you've been wondering how to get into iPhone development, I'd be honored if you'd attend my talk.

• WWDC: Did I mention how long that nap was afterwards? WWDC is a monster of a conference. I'm just speculating here, but iPhone 3.0 may crank things up a notch or two. Maybe. I took a couple years off (it's not that kind of a nap) to work around summer plans. With all the work I've been doing lately on iPhone though, this year is a no-brainer for me.

If you plan to attend one of these conferences, I hope to meet you!