A WEEK AT BIG NERD RANCH
A WEEK AT BIG NERD RANCH
- Subject: A WEEK AT BIG NERD RANCH
- From: "Craig A. Mattocks" <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 17:33:19 -0500
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big-nerd.c:27: warning: humor embedded in story.
make: *** Don't know how to make `sense'. Stop.
Application has exited due to signal 10 (SIGBUS).
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Photos at:
http://www.morfz.com/BigNerd/class.html
A WEEK AT BIG NERD RANCH (March 17-22, 2002)
--------------------------------------------
In which Leroy the Llama becomes a righteous
Cocoa developer and learns to lead the herd.
Leroy the llama snarfed down another mouthful of lush, green Appalachian
clover. The crisp North Carolina mountain air stung his nostrils, yet it
was no match for his thick woolly fur. Casting his eyes across the
steaming lake, he noticed a big commotion at the Freedom Escape Lodge.
"Hey, Lola," he snorted, "look at all them geeky, pasty-white hoomans
stumbling out of the green van."
"Those aren't your ordinary, garden-variety geeks," she replied, "those
are Big Nerdz. They've come here from all over the world to attend this
week's Cocoa programming course."
"Cocoa programming? What's to program? Boil some water, rip open a pouch
of chocolate mix, add a dash of milk, toss in a few marshmallows and..."
"No, no, no, you humpless old camel. Cocoa is the hottest, most elegant
object-oriented programming language to hit the planet. It's got all the
neatest development tools. They make your apps sparkle under the Aqua
interface."
"Oh, yeah. I knew that. Hey, I may not be the smartest dromedary in the
meadow, but even I know that Cocoa makes .NET look like alpaca piss. Let's
go see what them Nerdz are up to."
Sauntering up to the lodge, the two llamas stretched their necks up to the
second floor and peered in through the classroom window. Rows of G4 Cubes
with crystal-clear flat panel displays adorned the tables.
Leroy was stunned but perplexed. "Hey, that don't look like Project
Builder on the computer screen."
"Nope, it's not. They're watching 'The Matrix' on DVD. It's a Big Nerd
tradition to watch a movie together the first night. Pass the popcorn,
please."
"Oh, man. Check out my Kung-Fu moves, Lola! Just like Morpheus. You can
call me Keanu Kamel! Watch me dodge some bullets!" He begain flailing his
split hooves wildly.
"[sigh] Lorenzo Llama you're not, Leroy. Let's come back tomorrow morning
and listen in on class."
Waking to the sound of the ducks quacking on Big Nerd Lake, the two llamas
ambled up the hill to the lodge and eavesdropped on the first day's class.
"Welcome to Big Nerd Ranch," began Aaron Hillegass, the instructor and
author of the book 'Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X'. "There's a lot to
learn. Today will be like drinking from an open fire hydrant. It will be
messy, you're face is gonna get wet, you'll probably feel lost and
exhausted, you may even hate me by the end of the day. But the next day
will be better and, by the end of the week, you'll be building Cocoa apps
effortlessly."
"Man, that boy is one tall drink of water," blurted Leroy, marvelling at
the instructor's height. "Must be about eight-foot-ten, like my cousin
Smedley the wrestler, aka the Andean Giraffe. WWF rules! Say, what's that
big brown thing on his head? Did some forest critter crawl up there and
die?"
"That, my sopwith simpleton, is a 10-gallon cowboy hat -- official Big
Nerd wear for propellerhead programmers."
The two llamas watched in amazement as the class flew through six chapters
in one day: frameworks, Project Builder, Interface Builder, Objective-C,
retain/release/autorelease, controls, document architecture, delegates,
key-value coding, archiving,... Typically, the instructor would present
an overview of each chapter's material using an XML-based PDF presentation
app he created called BigShow, then he would let the students work through
the detailed tutorials in the book.
"Hey, look at that student, Lola. He wired up an outlet to a color well in
Interface Builder but he lost it behind a window. So he decided to wire up
a second one. Now he can't figure out why the background color of his
NSView object doesn't change when he clicks on the color well. The kid is
lost. This situation is hopeless."
"Not at all, fellow member of the camelid family. With so much Cocoa
teaching experience and with one-on-one personal attention, I'll bet Aaron
will solve this problem in two shakes of a billy goat's tail."
Sure enough, Lola was right. In no time, Aaron discovered that the
messages were getting sent to the hidden color well. He quickly got the
student past his sticking point and back on a productive path, sparing him
from hours of frustration. "Nice try, Jedi knight," he kidded the student,
"but you'll have to get trickier than that to fool me. Now let's break
for lunch."
Just then Leroy smelled the most captivating aroma coming from the kitchen
below. Brent, the lodge's professionally trained chef, had prepared
special meals for those students who were vegetarians. "Grilled portobello
mushroom sandwiches," drooled Leroy, "my favorite!"
"Not for you, my foraging friend," chided Lola. "Your three-chambered
stomach may be efficient but it can't handle hooman food. Back to the
pasture for you."
"::HaRUMPH::" grunted Leroy. "C'mon, Lola, how am I gonna learn Cocoa
without ample sustenance?"
"Jeesh. [rolling her eyes] Let me remind you that the Incas used to
worship llamas and call us their 'silent brothers'. Now live up to your
heritage."
The intensity of the coursework crested that afternoon. Despite frequent
study breaks, consisting of walking around the lake and feeding the ducks,
by the end of the day all the budding Nerdz were wiped out. In one day
each student had created a bucketful of Cocoa apps with elegant Aqua
interfaces -- interactive spreadsheetlike tables with fancily formatted
numbers, sliders, buttons, customized menus and messages intercepted by
delegates. They had "freeze-dried" (archived) their objects, installed
custom icons into their apps, even hacked plist files.
Now it was time to head for the Biltmore Estate, a huge, castlelike
mansion that George Vanderbilt had built in North Carolinas Blue Ridge
Mountains in the 1890's. The 8,000-acre retreat, with its own winery and
gardens, is a popular tourist attraction. Known as "America's largest home"
, the Biltmore House has 250 opulently furnished rooms. The class dined in
the estate's elegant Bistro restaurant, with the instructor picking up the
tab. Not too shabby.
The second day of class was just as intense as the first but much more fun:
views and drawing, compositing images, making them fade in-and-out,
stretching them, NSBezierPaths, ScrollViews, plus all sorts of hidden
tricks and settings. The students seemed to be grokking the AppKit.
"Grok this, NSMutants!" sneered Leroy. "I'm tired of eating grass. Can't I
reach in with my hoof and filch one of Chef Brent's homemade brownies?
I've got some multiple Nib-bling to do."
"Now don't be a gluttonous guanaco", scolded Lola, "though with a bit more
spit in your hair, you could pose as a cyberpunk."
"Yeah, and sneak into the lodge! But how am I gonna get past that bear in
the lobby?"
"Oh that's just a carved wooden statue, you Peruvian packer. But how will
you convince the instructor that you're a student?"
"No problem, my loquacious little llama. All students receive a free Big
Nerd Ranch t-shirt, coffee mug, Cocoa programming book and a CD containing
all the solutions and lecture notes. I'll get decked out with all the Big
Nerd stuff, don my shades, and walk right in while listening to my iPod."
Lola covered her eyes with her right front fetlock as Leroy snuck into the
classroom. His hooves made a bit of a clacking sound on the polished
wooden floor but he managed to find an unoccupied G4 Cube near the
ping-pong table and settled in at the keyboard. He began pecking away with
his soft padded feet.
"Hmmm... www.llama.org... 'Llamas are very prestigious; observe their
proud, majestic presence and gentle disposition.' Ah, yes."
Aaron's nose suddenly wrinkled up in the middle of his NSPasteboards
lecture. "Whew! What a pungent barnyard scent that student is exuding," he
thought, "even for a geek, who are notorious for their lack of grooming
habits. Perhaps I'd better relax that restriction on wearing cologne to
class."
"I hope everyone brought a peronal project with them," he continued,
"because everyday after class I'd be happy to help you get your Cocoa apps
up-and-running." He turned towards Leroy. What kind of project did you
bring with you, Mister, uh, Mister...?"
"Moe," answered Leroy, "Moe Hair." Without even flinching his bushy brown
eyebrows, he exuberantly began to describe his project. "I am developing a
genealogy app to trace the history of my ancestors, who migrated to the
Andean Mountains in South America after the Ice Age."
"Whoa, now that's some family history! You're going to need a big
NSDictionary object to keep track of all that data."
Aaron pulled a chair up next to the llama. Brushing a few flies off his
new student's furry coat, he guided him through the development process.
"Start with a Cocoa Document-based Application. Now drag out a TableView
and wire the target/action methods... Say, aren't you dressed a bit warm
for being indoors?"
"My hoov-, er uh, fingers move faster across the keyboard when I'm warm,"
replied Leroy. He hacked feverishly through the night on his
FamilyTree.app, with his fellow Nerdz offering suggestions and shortcuts.
"No offense, Moe" said a geek from Cisco, "but your great-grandmother
seems to have had a problem with excessive facial hair. And her ears..."
"Runs in the family," responded Leroy, "we communicate our feelings
through ear postures and vocalizations, particularly humming."
"Oh, I see," said the Cisco geek, cautiously backpedaling into his room,
"Goodnight. See you at breakfast tomorrow."
As the morning's first rays of sunlight streamed in through the lodge
window, Leroy finished polishing up his app and posted it to
sourceforge.net under the "Llama Tools" directory.
"Lola, quick, come see!" he called out, "I've created this wonderful,
killer Cocoa app. We can sell it for a few apples each and become
fabulously wealthy. We'll be able to move to the upper pasture next to the
old mill."
"Congratulations, Mr. Hair," said Aaron, as he shook Leroy's hoof and
handed him his Big Nerd Ranch diploma. "Remember, I'll help you with any
Cocoa development problems you have for 3 months after this course. Also,
if you're interested, I'm hoping to offer an Advanced Cocoa Programming
class in about six months. Description forthcoming."
After Friday's class and a few slices of pizza for lunch, the exhausted
but buzzed geeks piled back into the Big Nerd van to depart for the
Asheville airport.
Waving their split hooves goodbye, Leroy and Lola chanted the class motto.
"Lead the herd!" they shouted. Then they trotted back to the farm below
the lake with big smiles on their faces and their heads held just a few
notches higher. "We're Cocoa programmers now. For real. Hooray!"
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