Lunch and Learn, iPhoneU

For the past couple weeks a few of us at work have gotten into watching screen casts while having our lunch. There have been a variety of topics so far include one on MacRuby and another on HTML5. Most of the time though it’s been some sort of iPhone programming screen cast, the staple being the Stanford iPhone Application Programming lectures.

Not only is this a lot of fun (yes, I am a big nerd and think a video on HTML5 is fun) but I find that learning a new programming language/framework/etc really helps with your day to day work. Every programming language does things a little differently. When you embrace the methodologies of a new language it can open your eyes to different ways of looking at the programming problems you might face, no matter what technologies you’re using.

On top of just watching the Stanford lectures they have all the notes and assignments online so we’ve been working away at those in the evenings. I’ve started posting my solutions to GitHub and will continue to update them as we progress. HelloPoly and Presence 2 are completed so far, check them out if you’re interested.

If you are interesting in programming for the iPhone or just want to try something new I’d defiantly recommend the Stanford iPhone lectures. The final version of the Presence assignment ends up being a full blown Twitter client with threading, contacts integration, search and much more.

Take the initiative and have your own Lunch and Learns.