So while ive been working on this, ive been running into a few issues, mainly getting the relations set up correct in the data models, but its been working very smoothly.  While re-working this, i thought to myself, i need to use the repository pattern in this.  As core data is still a bit new, there is still a little bit of textual writing while querying, and instead of having strings for this all over the place in various classes, ill just have them all in one class.

Here’s some info on the repository pattern (using .NET as an example) here.

In most of our recent projects, weve been using the repository pattern with our Linq-To-SQL classes, and its been very helpful in keeping code clean, with all of the querying in one spot.

Im currently working on an example project in XCode that shows how to implement the repository pattern, while using protocols as well for some cool safecatches.

Look for that towards monday or tuesday.

Pros: Less Code, Very Little Handwritten SQL (Predicates still need it)

Cons:Any numeric value and Bools are saved as NSNumber.

All in all its a fun adventure so far, ill keep you up to date!

In almost any app you’ll find on the app store, there will be some kind of button that takes you somewhere outside of said app. I have no qualms with that, however i do have a problem with not informing the user that said button WILL be doing that. How many times have you (if you’re an iphone user) clicked a button, only to find out that its closed the application and moved on to its designated task?

I completely understand the necessity and want to have an app do some sort of activitiy outside of itself, I don’t understand, however why so many apps dont mention this to the user, either explicitly or implictly. If you are going to a website, use the safari image on the button, or just have the text imply that clicking the button will take you out of the app.

I guess on the other side to it, the developer could say “well the user should know clicking that link would take them out”, but i think that’s an unfair assumption.

Have you had any frustrations with this? If so let me know!

My background in programming started off in high school in which i started off using an express version of Microsoft Frontpage where i made a hip hop key styling battle forum. (quite ridiculous i know, but hey, you gotta start somewhere!). I knew from the get go that i enjoyed creating websites and the puzzles that came with having to figure out the language to get exactly what i wanted to display.

In college, i got my hands on Flash and Dreamweaver, and began to make more animated and stylistic sites, for artists like Cage, High and Mighty, and MHz. While I couldnt do the greatest graphics in the world, the sites did their job, and pretty well if you ask me. All of my excitement and joy of programming led me to taking a programming class in college; it ended up being in C++ and while others seemed to despise it, i flourished. In my next semester, i had to take another programming class, this time in Java. I didnt like it as much as the C++ class but I got through with no problems.

During this class I got the opportunity to become an intern for a project that my college was doing in partnership with NCR corporation, which was mainly written in C/C++. I worked on that project for 4 years, and while i had my hardships with it, i always loved it. Void pointers, header files, structs, I loved it. After that project I moved on to a few different companies, all working in the .NET platform. While I love the .NET platform, I always feel like im just creating very static solutions, with no artistic feel, which really isn’t a bad thing all the time, I just always like to see something more living from what i work on (let’s face is CMSs are pretty standard).

About a month ago, my job asked me if I would be interested in possibly working on iPhone applications. Knowing that its based primarily in objective-c, I knew it wouldn’t be a hard language to pick up. After working on it for about 3-weeks now, I can whole-heartedly say that im in love with it.

It feels like the perfect blend of what I love, hardcore close-to-the-memory programming, with an artistic output of the code. I’ve been worried that maybe im just in the honeymoon phase of this, but i really dont think I am. With the rise of the demand for mobile applications, I can do nothing but smile knowing that I’ll probably be able to be working with the iphone more and more.

I’ll be keeping this blog up to date with frustrations and findings I have while I go through this new journey of mine.

Heres a few things I’ve learned already:

1. Don’t trust the simulator.
2. TabBarControllers are view hogs. (Portrait vs Landscape)
3. XCode uses a weird symbol for the option key (it may be all mac apps, i dunno, still a mac noob!)
4. XCode’s debugging suite is a joke compared to Visual Studios.

Anyways, if you’re an iphone dev and want to drop some tips, good sites, whatever, please feel free to do so!

So here we go.

• New season for television is finally here, so far all the shows I’m digging are Fringe, and the Mentalist.  Haven’t had any time for any comedies, although my aunt tells me that worst week ever is pretty “effing funny”.  Might have to catch up on that online or something.  My faves that have returned seem to be in good form as well, Heroes,The Shield, House, Prison Break, and Terminator.

• New mixtape from The Hamiltization processhas dropped a few days ago.  Basically a newer MC named Charles Hamilton is coming out, guns a blazed you could say. I think this is really interesting in the fact that he is dropping all these mix-tapes for free just to get his name out, so far ive been pretty impressed, make sure you check it out.
• New issues on the linq/MVC front, mainly coming from needing to use a checkbox list using a many-to-many table, luckily found a nice article on how to alleviate this issue, here (this work was based off another blog, however i find this one a bit easier on the eyes, as well a little easier to comprehend)
• New crisis! Apparently gas is short, at least according to the people in Atlanta, where gas is almost impossible to find due to the hurricanes in the gulf.  Kind of weird that Atlanta is the ONLY city i think this is happening. (they’re also a red state, so who knows. yes that’s a diss)
• New nike zoom tremodeled after Marty McFly’s sneaks in Back to the Future II (do want, new ones not old) 

During lunch today we talked briefly on a topic that I found quite interesting, what is the best way to obtain information from a user without making it seem like they are divulging just information over and over?  Obviously this becomes a battle of two sides, the client (for us) and the user (the public). 

The client ideally gets as much information as possible with as little investment as possible.  The user, on the other hand, doesn’t want to just go through page after page of forms with little to no reward.

So wheres the middle ground? 

The client has to provide a site that has  to reward the user, all while doing it in a manner that will retrieve information from the user, with zero to little awareness of the knowledge transfer.

For me, one of the more basic examples of this is the achievement system for the xbox 360.  While it may or may not gather information that could enhance society, it does however show you how far a user is willing to go to get recognition for doing a simple or sometimes not so simple task (little rocket man anyone?).  Im wondering if game devs or at the least MS has the ability to sort all users by achievement, it’d be interesting to see which achievements are the hardest/easiest to get, in order to perhaps balance the next game coming out for a wide base of users.

This same achievement idea has been pushed onto http://stackoverflow.com where users get “badges” for interacting with other users, and the site as well.

I mentioned that users have to have little to no awareness of the transfer of knowledge but I do know that there are obvious contradictions to that (wikipedia, any open source project, etc etc)  but in my opinion the number of people who don’t contribute freely vastly out weighs the other. 

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, been real busy with work, life, and vader’s birthday (turned 4!).

I’m thinking about writing my own CheckboxList HtmlHelper because apparently we don’t really need one for MVC .net. So ill make sure to chronicle that adventure!

Stay tuned.

How old were you when you started programming?

I had my first experience with programming oddly enough when I was with the boy scouts, at summer camp in 93, so when I was 13 to get some kind of computer merit badge. Funny thinking back on it, I was at a summer camp, but I chose to be inside playing on a computer! It was only BASIC, but I caught onto it really quickly, and ended up doing things more advanced than what the class had called for.

How did you get started in programming?

I pretty much always enjoyed the thought of creating something on the computer, so I began to create AOL member homepages, with all sorts of clichéd animated gifs and fonts (Brooklyn kid anyone? It’s so hip-hop). While I was doing that at home, I was taking a computer class in high school in which used basic as well, and like summer camp, got my projects done quickly and ended up doing more than was required.

What was your first language?

As vie stated already, my first language was BASIC, but my real first language that I started to really do things with was C++, which I actually started with my first year at college (I had been doing HTML websites, but I don’t really consider that a programming language)

What was the first real program that you wrote?

I guess the first real one that I wrote, that actually could do something really functional was my final project for my C++ class, in which I had an input file of weather information for 5 years, and I had to sort it via user input for a variety of options, I’m pretty sure I was the only one in the class that got an A one it (brag brag), but it was a moment in my programming career that really gave me some confidence in what I was doing.

What languages have you used since you started programming?

I’ve used PHP for an e-commerce site for a friend, C/C++ for my first real programming job, C#, VB, VB.NET, and I’m now getting into Ruby on Rails.

If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?

I would’ve started earlier on learning patterns and practices. I think the best thing about being a developer is that you are always getting to work with new tools and practices, unlike marketing or something where it’s more or less the same thing all the time.

If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?

Don’t be afraid to admit you don’t know something or how to do something. When you’re new, you have to know that you don’t know everything, and not be afraid to ask an older person. There were numerous times at my jobs where I spent way too much time trying to figure something out, finally asking a coworker on how to approach an issue, and learning something new that almost immediately solved the problem. The best thing I experienced was that through these discussions with co-workers we’d talk about even more things programming related, therefore learning even more.

Most of my coworkers have been doing their development with Ruby on macs, and have told me how much of a breeze it is(mainly due to it coming installed already).  I finally got everything installed and decided to use the RadRails plug-in for eclipse for my IDE.  I began to work through Agile Web Development with Rails and got through the first 5 chapters with no problems, only to find out that I’m working with the 1st edition, which doesn’t cover Rails 2.0, so I decided to stop until later(tomorrow).  My initial reaction however is: WOW. I’ve missed out.  Never again will i let my Microsoft fan-boyism take precedence to advancing my knowledge/skills.

The more that I keep working with MVC.net, the more i begin to work with having all of my code in one location.  In my previous job I had worked with the code behind pages for my server side code, i was pretty adamant about keeping the two separate.  As I was reading Jeff Atwood’s post about Tag Soup, I couldn’t help but be in total agreement with what he was discussing. 

It’s very easy to get super lazy and just let your code get very sloppy, especially having up to three different types of tags together (JScript, Html,and Server Side).  I will admit that I am very new at working with all of my code in one location, so I’ve noticed that some of my pages are indeed a nice helping of tag soup.  Luckily, however, Rob Conery has posted a retort to Jeff’s post, in which it goes into good detail on how to clean up Tag Soup with MVC.NET, definately a good read for everyone working with, or hoping to work with the new framework.

A great thing about my job is that we always strive to work with the most current frameworks and components.  Ive been getting to use linq and its Linq-To-SQL DAL and I have to say im pretty impressed with it, it has made me respsect IEnumerable and Collections a LOT more now that I get to use them more now.  Even if your project or work isnt using it, i highly recommend it.

On to some non-work related Items, one of my favorite brands, Mishka has begun to implement a “custom” clothing editor ala NikeID (which is FAR better executed).

While I see what they’re doing, going for the one shirt a month limited edition type thing, I still think it’s kind of all hype.  Plus I’ve never been a fan of the death adder line.

That’s all for today, I’m gonna update again this week with some new hiphop albums i’ve gotten lately, so stay tuned for that, as usual, comments are appreciated, and if you wanna trade links, hit me up at james [AT] agencynet [DOT] com.

Anyways, this is a quick post, as I’m getting tired but wanted to mention that I’m working with .NET’s new MVC framework, and it’s pretty exciting stuff for me, mainly due to me not using the MVC pattern before, and from what Ive been doing so far, I’m really sad that I’m only just now hearing about/working with it.  I am somewhat concerned that we are still working with a preview build that we may getting bitten by major changes from now to release, but I think it’s definitely worth the risk.

I’m going to attempt to install Rails,Ruby and a working IDE on my Vista Laptop this weekend so that I can start learning that language, I’m going to document everything I go through and post about it on Sunday or so, I expect a frustrating, yet fun experience with that.

Also make sure to check out my friend Ben’s blog, its recently redesigned and really dope, designed by another co-worker Chris.

• Programming principles, issues i face, and opinions
• Videogaming,Videogames, and the Videogame industry
• Music, mostly of the hiphop nature
• Fashion (rarely)

Im hoping to change the image above, i was going to attempt something tonight, but couldnt really find the images i was looking for, then pretty much figured it’d look like complete garbage, so i stopped.

I’m going to try and keep things going around here so feel free to comment on whatever and i hope you enjoy your time here!