“The University of Washington’s Professional and Continuing Education program is now offering a professional certification program for iPhone and Mac development. The program, developed in conjunction with the UW Department of Computer Science & Engineering, as well as an advisory board chock full of top-notch Mac developers, consists of three classes, through which you can earn a ‘Certificate in iPhone and Cocoa Development,'” Chris Foresman reports for Ars Technica.
“The program’s advisory board is sort of a who’s who of indie Mac developers, including Brent Simmons (NewsGator), Gus Mueller (Flying Meat), Ken Case (OMNI Group), and Chris Parrish (Rogue Sheep). It also includes Joe Jones from Microsoft’s Mac BU, Joe Heck from Disney Interactive, and Greg Robbins from Google. Toporek, Daniel Pasco, Bill Moorehead, Hal Mueller, Erik Turnquist, and UW Vice Provost David Szatmary round out the board,” Foresman reports. “This board defined the course objectives and topics, designed to prepare someone to develop great iPhone and Mac apps.”
Foresman reports, “The only prerequisite is some experience programming in language such as C, C++, .NET, or Python.”
More info in the full article here.
the only programming language I can follow is FORTRAN. All others is just jibberish to me.
I can program in Hypercard!
I know both programing languages, Hypercard and Fortran.
This is cool, but you can get the same education for free at iTunes U. Stanford has not only an iPhone course available, but also the 3 recommended pre-requisite classes. So, for someone with 0 programming experience, you can learn from the ground up without paying a thin red dime.
The only drawback – if you can call it that – is the lack of a ‘certification’. However, in my experience, employers care less about what paper you have framed on your wall, and more about what you can actually DO.
UW has a professional certification program for iPhone and Mac development with a M$ person on the board. Where are the Apple people folks?
I can write concert programs.
“The only drawback – if you can call it that – is the lack of a ‘certification’. However, in my experience, employers care less about what paper you have framed on your wall, and more about what you can actually DO.”
Not true in education! I have lots of hard experience to show that!
I have nearly 30 years of daily experience in over 100 software packages, and get blown out every day by some 22 year old kid who passed his college computer courses and all kinds of paper certificates, but does not have enough applied wisdom to remember where he parked his car. The kids have no idea how to apply their “knowledge”. If it was not covered in class, they have no idea how to work their way out of the problem using common sense.
End of rant.
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My wife can write checks! I’m giving away her age I suspect.
That’s why I am studying C and Objective C.
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Just going to go around the kiddies and leave them in my dust.
And if they want paper, I will play the game.
@kenh,
This is true in some sectors of employ. However, in areas of design – and I feel that application programming falls into that category for this example – potential employers/clients are going to judge your capabilities by what you demonstrate in your portfolio.
If I am, for instance, the hiring manager at a software company looking for someone to work in our newly formed iPhone group, and I have two candidates; one of whom has a degree or certificate with no real work to show beyond basic class projects, and the other has a portfolio showcasing 5 or 6 really solid apps or app concepts that are well executed and/or designed, then I will go for the latter every-time. Perhaps I will offer an internship or try him/her out on a contract/freelance basis; but I want to ensure that the person I hire has not only the necessary skill-set but also the wherewithal to be able to apply that knowledge in real-world scenarios. (forgive the run-on sentence, I am pressed for time, but wanted to reply).
I base this statement off my own experience working as a freelance 3D motion graphics artist and video editor.
@Willie G, where do I submit my app?
Silverhawk raises a good point. I know Chuck Toporek and Ken Case, and while they’re both well-known and respected in the Cocoa developer community, I still don’t place much weight on certifications like this.
The only certs that Apple endorses are for hardware technicians, help desk, and network administrators, and the tests they have to pass are written by Apple engineers. Testing whether someone is proficient at coding is rather more difficult.
-jcr
Ok, this doesn’t give me a lot of confidence:
Markel has over 15 years of experience in software development, beginning in Microsoft technologies and switching to OS X and open source in 2006. He’s worked with .NET, C#, Microsoft SQL Server, and also Java and web technologies.”
Mueller has over 20 years of experience in professional software development, and has been a Cocoa programmer since 2005.
2005? 2006? These are not the people I would look to for depth in this environment.
-jcr
Ideas count.
Programming is a skill, and the longer you have been at it, the more efficient you will be, knowing more shortcuts, avoiding pitfalls, but in the end, who has the best idea for a program?
It’s all about ideas and algorithms.
Someone with a great idea and decent enough Objective-C skills learned a year ago can build a mind blowing app, compared to the 20 year guru who writes another spreadsheet app.
EDUmobile offers an iPhone Training program delivered via Online Video, one-on-one sessions, PDFs and weekly worksheets. Visit http://edumobile.org/iphone-course.html to learn more.
There is also an option to access a remote Mac, for those who do not have access to one. Candidates get a certification on completion and an option to co-publish their first app on the Apple App Store.