I can’t help but think that we are rushing through so very many parts of this code that would benefit from a slower pace, and I already know what is going on here! I really dislike it whenever I am just handed some code in an educational course. People don’t learn well when they are given a big chunk of code and told what is going on in the code. It is much better to explain it in small chunks as you go along and have them actually build it.

Kudos though for showing some of the many things that can go wrong in Interface Builder and what to do about it.

Just a note that you may have a very difficult time getting your PlaySoundsViewController layout to look just like theirs, because they reworked it with two vertical stacks nested into another vertical stack after the video. Getting things into the right place is pretty simple in Interface Builder if you do it correctly the first time and work your way from the outside in to the details, but often quite difficult or nearly impossible if you start on the inside details and try to add outside containers after the fact. Many times, IB will just completely remove all constraints when you move something inside something else.

On to “UIKit Fundamentals” and MemeMe!

I was not too happy with the mix of disparate subjects here: AVFoundation, delegation, and segues. I am also disappointed in the sloppy coding practices employed. I really don’t think it would be too much trouble to teach error handling the right way, right at the beginning. Or at a minimum, to use proper error-handling code and say “This is error handling code. We will get into that later on down the road, but for now just copy it in” so people get used to seeing it and doing it. Instead, people get used to seeing how to avoid doing error handling and consequently get used to avoiding error handling.

It took me awhile to getting around to this next lesson; a lot longer than I would have liked. I was about to defect to working with Firebase, but I did not have time for that either. So when I did get some time, I came back to finish at least this first course on the path to attaining a nano degree.

This section was a little bit more involved, so it took a little bit longer than the first two at about sixty minutes. Not much to comment on here as none of the material was new or particularly enlightening for me. I did notice that my stop recording button is the same size as the record button. I’m not certain if the instructor added additional constraints on the image or if the instructor’s image has different dimensions than the stop recording button offered in the download. No matter, the button works the same whether it is large or small. For the record, I think the width and height have each been constrained to a size of fifty points. You can do that if you want your button to look like the instructor’s button.

Also, don’t drag all of the provided images into the Assets.xcassets folder. Everything that starts with “Icon” will eventually go into the AppIcon squares, so leave them out for now. If the instructors don’t come back to it, I will explain them here in a future post.

I have finished the first two sections of “Intro to iOS App Development with Swift”. Each section took me approximately forty-five minutes to watch, following along as I did so. Your mileage may vary, depending on whether or not you have Xcode installed and how familiar you are with it.

I am glad to see that the course has (mostly) kept up with the latest versions of Xcode and Swift.  This is especially important with Swift, because Swift 3 is dramatically improved over earlier iterations of the language. I was also pleased to actually learn some things: 1) Some useful keyboard shortcuts (that, had I been paying attention, I should have known already), and 2) How to quickly identify which user-interface elements are connected to bits of IBAction and IBOutlet code. Small things, yes, but at this rudimentary level I was not expecting anything really. I was also pleased that they demonstrated how things can go slightly awry and that this is normal and OK in the short-term and can eventually be overcome with a little thought and care.

Overall, a very good beginning.

I have decided to (re)attempt Udacity’s “Become an iOS Developer” Nanodegree program and blog about it here. This should be somewhat of a different take, as I am already an iOS developer. My odyssey begins now!

#learningSwift with @Udacity

Clearly, my plans for posting within the week did not pan out. What is more, I have temporarily stepped away from learning Android development to get a nanodegree in iOS development. Toward that end, I am currently involved in the “Intro to iOS App Development with Swift” class.

I am generally pleased with the class so far, although I have a great deal of familiarity with iOS app development already. Swift is new to me — of course, because Swift is a new language to everyone — but not much of the course has been about Swift. We have been promised more Swift in a future class toward the iOS Developer nanodegree.

I can tell Udacity has been learning more and more about what makes a successful online course. We are being strongly encouraged to participate in the forums and to create a community. In that vein, we are supposed to make a blog post about some particular subject. I need to go back and find that request and make that post here, but I am once again out of time, so look for that in the next post.