The Big Nerd Ranch

February 23rd, 2007

Earlier this month, I managed to do something I’ve wanted to do for around five years: I attended the Cocoa Boot Camp at the Big Nerd Ranch in Georgia.

I first picked up Aaron Hillegass’ book, Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, back in 2001, immediately after it was published. I’d been on OS X since the earliest public builds, and loved it. The underlying tech – from the kernel to the app frameworks – was exciting to me as a relative newbie to both the Apple world and desktop app development.

I’ve since owned every edition of the book, and almost every other Cocoa/Obj-C book out there, but have never taken a class on the subject. I did attend WWDC last year, but the topical sessions aren’t the same as an in-depth classroom experience (though they are quite valuable).

One of the benefits of a session at BNR is that all distractions are removed for a week. Students are taken away from their families, comfy chairs, favorite bourbons, loud offices, DVRs and insane clients and locked away at a remote facility for five days. They are forced to learn, taking breaks only for meals comprised of fried food and iced tea so sweet the supersaturated sugars crystallize in plain site.

Another benefit of the Cocoa Boot Camp is that Aaron guides you through his book from start to finish, lecturing and answering questions as he goes. The structure, immediate feedback, and question sessions are worth the cash on their own.

Three of us from The Barbarian Group attended (Ashley Holtgraver, Keith Butters, and myself) and I think we all found the class inspiring, educational and fun. I’d recommend any of the BNR courses to folks without a second thought.

I’ll write a more in-depth review of the class soon.

  • I have a draft of the first part in a ‘how to create your first site’ series almost done. I need to spend some time on it, but have a lot going on… Boo hoo, woe is me.

  • ginar

    hey TobyJoe! look at you, all blogging and everything. i’ve been meaning to ask you a question re: website software… basically, where do i begin? i have a basic understanding of HTML and Dreamweaver but would like to understand a bit more, get to the next level. so, where do i begin? or go from here?? are these even the right questions??? or should i just hire a professional… any advice would be appreciated.

  • ginar

    i’d buy that in a heartbeat! there just seemto be so many options and i don’t know where to start.
    my goal is to eventually have a real life store here in Detroit, but in the meantime, i want to post my venture online to drum up business and such. it’ll be sort of a design gallery/ retail store. i figure that until i get the business plan firmed up and decide if we will rent a storefront or open the front of our former-Polish-deli-house i can begin online. but i’m not interested in e-commerce so much. think i’ll still make people call or e-mail me if they want to buy stuff. an online mom n’ pop store of sorts… but i also want to write more and have a publications branch… need to focus.

  • yeah, yeah, making babies and all that, very time consuming :]
    but seriously, let me know when the ‘how to create your first site’ series is up and running. i started reading the RoR artcle but from someone else’s machine so no tutorial play-along yet… now that i’m unemployed there just isn’t any time in the day!

  • Hi, Gina.


    It kind of depends on what you want to do. If you want a blog/self-published zine, I can help set you up pretty quickly.


    Michele and I had discussed a while back the idea of me writing a how-to guide for total newbies to get them up and running. Maybe I’ll do that today :)

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