The Big Nerd Ranch, which teaches programmers in an environment that includes room and board, is now offering Cocoa training and “Extreme Mentoring” to organizations seeking on-site classes for their future Cocoa development teams. One week of intensive on-site training is followed by one week of on-site mentoring when your team is ready to begin development.
Cocoa is an advanced object-oriented programming environment. According to Apple, Cocoa gives developers a whole new toolbox for building the best next-generation applications. It’s a collection of advanced, object-oriented APIs for developing applications written in Java and Objective-C.
“Traditional training provides the knowledge your team needs in order to build applications in Mac OS X,” Big Nerd Ranch founder Aaron Hillegass said. “Building applications brings up new questions and practical experience introduces problems that couldn’t have been predicted during class. As with all learning, material that isn’t immediately used is often forgotten. Extreme Mentoring reintroduces you to what you’ve forgotten, and allows your team to move forward quickly and efficiently.”
When your organization schedules a week of Big Nerd Ranch training, Hillegass, author of Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, spends a week at your facility instructing your team in a comprehensive Cocoa course. At the end of that week, your team will be ready to build applications in Mac OS X, Hillegass said.
When development begins, Big Nerd Ranch Mentor James DiPalma spends a week with your team, working through a practice application related to your eventual development goals. With your team, he applies Extreme Programming concepts, including programming in pairs, testing, creating coding standards and performing code reviews, nightly “releases,” and flexible and adaptable design. For a complete description of the program, including pricing, go to the Big Nerd Ranch’s class site.
Hillegass has over seven years of experience consulting and teaching. James DiPalma has more than six years of experience with Apple and NeXT, focusing on design and software quality.