Learning iOS Development

For those looking to learn developing iOS I'd recommend the following material to help you get started.

If you are not familiar with Objective-C a good book to get you started is "Learning Objective-C 2.0" published by Addison Wesley.

To get familiar with the architecture and ideas behind iOS development definitely read through application programming guide at http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/iPhone/Conceptual/iPhoneOSProgrammingGuide/Introduction/Introduction.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40007072.

An easy to follow and understand first book on iOS specific development is "Beginning iPhone 4 Development - Exploring the iOS SDK" published by Apress.  This book had very complete examples that worked which helped take the frustration out of trying to figure things out whereas some of the other iOS books leave you scratching your head if you don't know what you're doing.

After the above you can go in many directions depending on the type of application you are interested in writing, but those should get you started on the right path.

Update 4/6/2011 - The above books get you familiar with the concepts without going too far into the weeds that you just get lost, but it also means that you sometimes feel left wondering how things really work or connect.  A decent book for learning how things fit together at the code level without Interface Builder is "Advanced iOS 4 Programming" published by Wiley.  Interface builder is not used to encourage better understanding of how the pieces connect which also allows you to code more advanced applications that are not possible using interface builder alone.

WebSphere 7 JSP Java Version Quirk

A couple weeks ago I was working with a client to deploy some web application enhancements to their WebSphere 7 Express server and ran into an unexpected issue.  I had been developing and testing on WebSphere 7 Developer edition which is a full version of WebSphere, but with unlimited use for development.  After numerous deploys and no changes to the default configuration of the server instance I had expected a smooth deployment to WebSphere 7 Express on the client's server.  However, as it turns out the WebSphere 7 Express version defaults to version 13 of Java which is Java 1.3 even though the rest of the server is running on Java 1.6.  In order to change the version of Java for JSP compilation one must choose the detailed deploy and pre-compile JSP option to set the version to a later version otherwise any JSP's developed using features specific to versions above 1.3 will fail to compile and users will see error messages upon page load attempts.  This is just another of many WebSphere 7 quirks I've run into ever since my first experience with WebSphere on version 5.

Up and Running

The corporation is finally up and running with it's own domain, email, website, and more.  Google certainly has a nice set of tools for businesses and individuals to get something up and running quickly and the best part is it's free.  Started this blog as a place to put posts on issues and information related to IT.  Hopefully it will be useful as a reference to the company and others.