I'm just now at the airport, waiting to board the plane which will take me to Atlanta and the Cocoa Bootcamp. This is a trip I've been looking forward to for over a year.

I have prepared for the course by reading most of Aaron Hilegass' book Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, and of course by meddling with iPhone development. But I have always found it easier to learn by interacting with knowledgeable people, so this will be my big chance to really get to grips with the parts of the Cocoa framework which I haven't been able to grasp.

The Interface Builder has been my biggest stumbling block so far, leading to me writing all interfaces in my iPhone applications in code. So I hope to come away from this week with new insights into how it's supposed to be used. Interface Builder is a very different beast compared to the .NET Visual Studio experience I'm used to. However, I fully expect it to be superior once I can wrap my mind around it. It is an Apple product after all.

Judging by his book, Aaron has a knack for systematically introducing progressively more complex concepts in a very clear and easy to follow manner. I thoroughly recommend his book to anyone new to Objective-C and Cocoa. I think I may be able to finish it during the flight.

I'll summarize my experience at the Big Nerd Ranch in an upcoming post.