Developing for the desktop has been fun and an interesting change of pace from iPhone development. A full post-mortem is on the way.

In the mean time, it’s a great feeling to add a bit of OS X freeware to the world.

The most important point: If you want a great application with a user experience you’ll be proud of, build a native application using Apple-blessed developer tools and resources. Apple’s developer tools are outstanding applications and the iPhone frameworks provide useful, battle-tested, mature code that lets you do a lot without reinventing the wheel every time you need to build even basic functionality. Best of all, Apple gives their tools away for free.

Don’t screw around with stuff like PhoneGap or Adobe’s Flash-to-iPhone binary whatsit just because it might be a little closer to your comfort zone. You’ll risk writing an application with a library that gets left in the dust when Apple releases a new version of the SDK with great new features. You’ll also risk having your application rejected if Apple decides one morning that the tools you used are accessing private methods, running interpreted code or disrespecting some other element of the SDK agreement. Finally, you’re not going to be working with the same design vocabulary expressed by every popular iPhone application.

With UIKit, Apple hands you an enormous pile of outstanding interface classes that are exceptionally clever, attractive and versatile. They’re yours to build with and do as you please. Thousands of hours of interface coding that you don’t have to do, saving you time and allowing you to write an app with an experience that’s consistent with everything your users will expect on the iPhone.

With Core Data, you get a powerful object modeling framework with built-in persistence. What does that get you? If you’re building an application, you’ve got data. Lots and lots of data, sometimes. You’re going to need a way to define and encapsulate that data so that you can keep track of relationships between different chunks, pass information around the application and store it for later use. This can be tedious, laborious, time-consuming work. Core Data does all of the heavy lifting for you.

For me, those are the biggest freebies you get with approaching iPhone development “the right way.” That barely scratches the surface, though, since Apple provides powerful APIs that let you accomplish drawing, manipulating the filesystem, performing network operations, dead-simple threading, and many other useful things.

Hopefully you’re intrigued. You’ll need to be, especially if you’re starting from scratch. There’s a big chunk of learning you’ll have to do. It’s worth it, though. The iPhone is a really fun platform and there’s something potent about developing for a mobile device that’s always in your pocket.

Find the section that describes you below and proceed from there for my advice on great learning resources.

You’ve never coded anything, ever (or, C-based languages scare you)

Let’s start with C. C is a venerable language with a long history, born in 1972. C is important background to have for iPhone development, since so many Apple APIs use either C or Objective-C, a related language we’ll talk about next.

Luckily, Dave Mark has you covered. Learn C on the Mac assumes no pre-existing experience with any programming language. You’ll get a friendly explanation of everything you need to understand C and the basics of programming. This is ground zero, indispensable knowledge for anyone who is approaching this with no experience. The best part is that Dave has written for someone who will be using Apple’s developer tools, so you’ll be getting a perspective that will be useful for your iPhone efforts a little bit later.

You’re comfortable with programming and C, but not Objective-C

Objective-C is built on top of C, so if you’ve got a basic comfort with programming in C, you’ll have an easy time getting up to speed. Objective-C lets you build object oriented code. Whuzzat? It’s Legos for programming. You can build your own bricks and trade them with friends. Put simply, object oriented programming (OOP) lets you build modular software that maximizes code reuse. Reusing code is good! Chances are, if you solve a problem once in your project, you’ll need that solution again later. OOP lets you easily package up these solutions and deploy them anywhere they’re needed in your code.

Confused? You won’t be after you read Learn Objective-C on the Mac. You’ll learn all the details of how Objective-C works. The book is packed with clear explanations of how to use object-oriented programming and practical exercises to get you comfortable with building useful code in Objective-C. You will not enjoy learning iPhone development without a solid foundation in Objective-C. You’ll get one here. Many lightbulbs will turn on for you.

You understand Objective-C but you’re not yet confident enough to build an app with it

If you feel great about Objective-C and you can’t wait to get started, go on to the next book. If you want to build a little more confidence, it might be worth spending some time practicing with Objective-C and how it interacts with Apple’s Cocoa API. What’s Cocoa? It’s a huge collection of pre-made building blocks you’ll use to build applications. (Not to be confused with Cocoa Touch, which is a version of Cocoa custom-tailored for the iPhone, which you’ll meet later.)

Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X is great introduction to Cocoa. You’ll learn about using Objective-C with Cocoa, use Interface Builder to construct some interfaces and walk through plenty of exercises. You even get to play with Core Data. By the first dozen chapters or so, you should be ready to rock. Many of the Cocoa goodies you play with on the desktop will be waiting for you on the iPhone.

You’re comfortable with programming and Objective-C

It’s time to get rolling with the iPhone.

I own several iPhone development books. None is a better, more useful introduction to developing for the platform than Beginning iPhone Development. It’s Dave Mark again, alongside Jeff LaMarche, with everything you need to get started. Beginning iPhone Development is a comprehensive exploration of building software for the iPhone. The authors provide friendly guidance as they break you in gently. You’ll learn how to construct interfaces, master table views, and how to store and load data, even using Core Data. The book is filled with useful, practical exercises that you’ll be able to use for your own projects. Dave and Jeff are great about providing code that is both understandable for learning and yet practical enough to serve as a springboard for solving your own problems in your own apps.

If you’re learning how to develop for the iPhone but you don’t have their book, you’re doing it wrong.

They don’t stop, there, either.

Jeff and Dave’s latest, More iPhone Development, is loaded with meaty chapters on advanced topics. My favorites: several chapters on Core Data (nearly half the book) and an outstanding tutorial on how to use Xcode’s debugging tools.

The breadth and depth of these titles together is unbeatable for a beginner iPhone developer. Between both books, you’ll have answers for most quandaries you’re likely to encounter in your early projects.

On teaching yourself

So how do you use these great learning tools? I’m a passionate, lifetime autodidact. Here’s my advice:

At least one hour, every single day.

The books I’ve described present their content split up into chapters. Read and work through at least one chapter per day. Don’t try to cram it all into a couple of weekends, skimming examples and reading exercises instead of trying them.

Even if you’re starting from the ground up, you can easily get through every single book I’ve described here within three or four months.

You’re setting up your own little school. Make a point of setting a time when your studies begin and end and make a habit of sticking to that schedule. If you have to miss a night of your programming school, give yourself some time to make up for it the next day.

Equipment

Get the PDF eBook editions of the books you need. You can never lose them, forget them at the office, spill coffee on them, whatever. They’re instantly searchable and much easier to work with in a nightly home school setting than paper books. They’re sometimes cheaper than paperbacks, you don’t pay shipping and you can get them instantly via the web. I have a blend of paperbacks and PDFs — I’m much happier with my PDFs, especially when traveling.

If you’re serious about programming, you’re going to need a second monitor as well, unless the one you already have is enormous. One day you’ll have real projects to work with, which means a debugger window, some documentation open at all times, and plenty of other clutter. A second display will make your life manageable. During your programming school, having a second display for your eBooks will make working through your exercises on the main monitor much easier.

Finally, you’ll need a notebook. As you work through books and exercises, make note of the important, central concepts and create lists of basic vocabulary. You’re going to have a lot of new knowledge to sift through. Make it easy on yourself by building your own cheat sheets to reference in the middle of exercises or when you make the jump to the next level of learning. It’s a lot easier to consult your own notes than try to figure out which book had which handy tip.

Start

Just get started. Pick a book, pick a time and start. It’ll be weird at first, especially if you’re new to programming. That’s okay. Wikipedia is close by with a wealth of technical articles on anything you might want to know about. If you have questions and don’t know who to ask, Stack Overflow is filled with knowledgeable (and not so knowledgeable) members who will be eager to point you in the right direction, no matter how specific or arcane the query.

Good luck! This is an exciting time to develop for mobile devices. The iPhone is the most potent and exciting handheld computer ever. You’re going to have a great time — once you get started.

(Note: Apress didn’t sponsor this post or anything but I notice they make up almost all of my recommendations. Kudos to them for hiring outstanding writers who care about relating their wisdom in a clear, enjoyable manner. Their books have great layout and intelligent structure, so they work as well for reference as they do for sequential, hands-on learning. Truly a great publisher who understands the needs of its audience.)

Lego was an instant bullet train to any world I could imagine. Space ships, robots, lunar colonies, pirate treasures, ancient castles, you name it. These were mine to explore. I could spend days at a time perfecting some imaginary construct made real through the magic of Lego bricks and the exertion of my crude abilities. I treasured the rarer pieces, protecting closely my little snap-on magnet linkages and battery-driven light bricks. Regardless of whatever turbulent nonsense might have been happening elsewhere in my little world, Legos were an inviolable source of joy.

Joy, you know, that feeling that lives somewhere between the pit of your stomach and the tip of your smile. That vague something that builds a simple, contented glow inside of you that’s like a thousand perfect, extra-gravy-save-me-some-pie thanksgiving dinners with none of the bloated aftermath. Maybe you just saw the most beautiful vista in all of the world. Maybe you just fell in love. Maybe you’re ten years old and you see exactly what you were hoping for under the Christmas tree. You know what I’m saying, right?

Joy.

The Macintosh came a bit later. At age 7, I got my hands on a borrowed Macintosh SE. And the joy was there, too. It could do so many things. It could produce clean, perfect type that was huge! I made a lot of paper signs. It could store all of this information and then show it to me again later. It could show me pictures and organize them into this tidy scrapbook.

And sounds! It made all these noises. I was most enamored with the quacking duck.

It was this whole world inside there that I could barely understand. I knew only one thing for certain: I wanted more. So much more of it.

Eventually, through about three years of begging and cajoling, I convinced my mom to plunk down the tidy sum necessary to secure a Performa 6116CD for our exclusive home use. (The fact that I kept spending a lot of time at the home of a neighbor kid who had his own Mac and whom my mother intensely disliked probably sped things along, too.)

The 6116 was an even greater magnitude of joy. An 8x CD-ROM drive and a huge bundled library of multimedia content like encyclopedias and interactive atlases. Plus creativity applications and, wonder of wonders, Sim City 2000. I had so much fun exploring this new world. I spent an inordinate amount of time learning every piece of software I could get my hands on.

It was joy.

And then, I grew up. Like so many, I lost my capacity for the discovery of simple joy. It became the exception rather than the rule of life. Go to school, then go to work, do your job, go home, repeat.

Then I found programming. It occurred to me tonight, as I struggled, quite happily, to grasp how the hell it is block arguments in Ruby work, that I’d rediscovered a simple, consistent source of joy. Programming languages are infinite bins of Lego blocks, waiting to be assembled to my liking. Programming is a limitlessly fascinating Performa, waiting for me to learn and harness any language for any task I can imagine. There’s just so much to learn and enjoy in programming computers.

Even after a few years of it, programming makes me feel joyfully like a kid again.

The universal trial, of course, is money and I’m hardly exempt. There’s a sixty day delay between me making money from an iPhone app and Apple actually paying me. That leaves immediate, painful gaps in my cashflow.

The obvious solution to this is consulting — I’m privileged to know how to do a lot of things that are useful to people. Unfortunately, I’m still learning how to market, grow and manage that particular end of my business, so I’m painted into the most dread of corners: retail.

I live by the axiom that no honest man is too good for honest work. So while retail is often the dullest, most imagination free work you can do before hitting manual labor, that’s not the part that I hate most about my seasonal job.

No, the worst of it is this: I have to call my customers “guests.”

This is some of the most odious corporate newspeak bullshit in recent years. It has always irked me. Guest means a specific thing: certainly it implies hospitality, which may explain the intent, but it fails to properly convey the truth of the relationship between the store and the customer. Being the guest of another places the guest in the inferior position and the host in the superior position. While manners may require that hospitality be extended, being termed a guest in the final equation simply means that the customer does not belong there. It suggests they belong somewhere else.

This is the wrong view.

The customer is not a guest of the store. A successful retail experience means that the customer is at home in the store.

Somewhere, somehow, having “customers” became a distasteful condition for large corporations. This is unfortunate and I wish they would cut the crap. The truth is that there is honor in having customers. There is honor in upholding the sanctity of the customer relationship. Being a customer of a business means something very specific that no other English word can capture. Being a customer means being the lifeblood of a business. Being a customer means being the motive force behind a powerful organism that provides products, services, livelihoods and, ultimately, the basic existence of others. Being a customer is being part of a tradition that keeps babies nourished, families housed and people clothed.

That means something. Something potent. Something that must be continually venerated if we’re going to keep moving forward as rational people. Does any of this sound remotely like having a “guest” to you?

I’m proud to have customers. I’m proud to respect their importance to my business and their contribution to the fact that I’m not sleeping outside tonight. That is essential to my work ethic and it will never, ever change.

The end of my seasonal retail job can’t come fast enough. I’m not sure my teeth will survive the grinding required for me to get the word “guest” past my lips on every shift.

But they called me. I had a job.

And I loved it. I’d never had more fun in my life. Thanks to a handful of adult mentors, I went from being shy and insecure in front of strangers to being outgoing, helpful and outrageously courteous, as befitted Publix’s customer service mission.  I got to meet people, learn about their lives and help make their day better, all in the time it took to bag up an order and pack in a car. Publix has a firm “no tipping!” policy and this was spelled out on a button affixed to my apron at all times. Despite this, not a week went by where a kindly retiree or harried but grateful parent didn’t stuff a couple bucks into my hand or pocket, buying me a sandwich or drink to end my shift. With a home life that was terrifyingly unpredictable and school that was tedious and unsatisfying, Publix, the people and the tangible benefits of my work there, became an escape that I craved.

There was plenty of reward in the fun of the job, but I found that throwing myself into my work with such gusto had other perks. When all of the front service clerks got reviews, there was much kvetching in the break room. Nickels and dimes, my teenaged colleagues moaned. They barely gave them anything for a raise. When my turn came, my boss, Mr. Starkey, called me into his office. After rattling through his estimate of my performance, I was given a fifty cent raise. It was the largest, Starkey confided, that anyone in my group had gotten. In retrospect, too, I realize that I was rarely tapped to do cleaning chores, since my management seemed to prefer me in front of customers as much as possible.

It was all so perfectly Randian, in a way that satisfied my then-Randroid brain. I gave honest effort in exchange for honest reward and recognition. Love your work, I thought as I pushed a pile of carts back into the store, and nothing feels like work.

Of course, it wouldn’t last. Home, as was its wont, took another lolloping, staggering jolt. For the second time in less than a year, we were moving away. Mr. Starkey was crestfallen. He’d been eager to groom me into cashiering and beyond. These were remarks that were and remain deeply flattering – it didn’t seem like he especially enjoyed terribly many of the other kids who had my title. At my request, he eagerly typed up a letter of recommendation. My favorite line, then and now:

“I would rehire him immediately if he were to return to Sarasota.”

I enjoyed it both for the heartfelt endorsement and for the tiny, whimsical implication that I was somehow in control of my existence.

I went on to be a salesman, an intern, a marketing manager and a project manager. With each job, I hoped to find the feeling I knew at Publix. The feeling of throwing myself into my work, enjoying every minute, and always hungry for more.

To be sure, I had some amazing jobs in the years since. Tremendous opportunities that provoked growth and change. But none of it could ever recapture the lost innocence of that first, magical time I worked at the supermarket. This realization, each time I started a new gig, was always a tiny disappointment.

For almost a decade, I’ve drawn a paycheck from someone. Until now. Not having been to the office, or any office, feels vaguely like retirement. Except there’s a ton of work to do.

And it’s back: that magic Publix feeling.

I love my new job. I’ve spent the last week building a new iPhone app from scratch. My new boss, me, really likes how it turned out. This is the most incredibly rewarding productive activity I have ever chosen for myself. The app is about done; I’ll have more to say about it soon. The most tremendous and powerful discovery came through its creation: I love developing applications for the iPhone. I can do it all day and night until my fingers hurt and still want more. It’s the most satisfying thing I’ve ever invested my working time doing. All I want is to get better and keep building.

Like Publix ten years ago, it doesn’t feel like work. It’s fun. It’s… wonderful.

Time will tell if this feeling and the products it creates will be sufficient to feed and house me. For now, I’ve got enough to hold out for awhile and give it everything I’ve got.

It’s a scary prospect to abandon security and regular cashflow, move across the country, and go into business for yourself, all the while hoping to hell everything will work out okay. Like many projects, it’s one of those things where if you truly took the time to consider all the attendant difficulty, complication and risk, you’d never bother to do it all.

It’s the best decision I’ve ever made.

There are no words to convey my excitement.

For as long as I’ve existed, there has always been an obligation to someone else’s rules lurking just beyond the horizon. Even on vacations, where time is theoretically mine, there was the lingering, ever-present knowledge that before I knew it, I would go back to a world of obliging someone else’s whims. For the first time, I’ll escape those bonds. It’s a feeling of freedom I’ve never known.

It must be stressed that while Full Sail has been a great place to work and I’m grateful for the experience, I had a job there and I have a handful of problems with working any “job,” no matter who supplies it. When I say job in this context, I mean any paid activity wherein you provide 40+ weekly hours in exchange for a regular paycheck, benefits and perhaps a reasonable approximation of social interaction. I’m a difficult, demanding, even impossible person, so these problems loom larger for me than perhaps they do you.

Ownership

When you arrive at your job and get down to the business of working, you are addressing problems that are not yours. These are the problems of whatever organization has hired you for your job. Depending on your level of career advancement and achievement, the problems you solve may range from the tedious (data entry) to the complicated (project or team management). No matter the complexity of your daily tasks, though, you can be assured that none of the problems they address are actually your own. While it is true that, through initiative, hard work and persistence, your handling of the organization’s problems can enrich your knowledge, experience and career prospects, this doesn’t change the fact that you’re doing someone else’s work.

Time

Unless you’re working at some sort of hippy, ultra-progressive company, you give 96% of your weeks to your job. That is a shitload of time. When I write it out like that, the egregious criminality of giving away that much of your life to someone who isn’t you seems so obvious, I can’t even come up with anything else to say.

Direction

I’ve spent a lifetime resenting any condition where someone else had authority to direct the discharge of my energies. The trade you make while collecting a paycheck is that in exchange for the money, someone gets to tell you what to do with 96% of your weeks. Even with the best boss, this deal is crap: Who wants to spend this much of their lives following orders?

Wealth

In the typical job arrangement, I would  show up each day and give a significant amount of time, energy, imagination and passion to the tasks of the organization. If I worked exceptionally hard while not being a douche and doing my best to help others be successful, I could earn promotions and more money. I would not become wealthy. Meanwhile, assuming successful management of the company, those who own the organization would increase their wealth. For many people, maintaining the wealth of others in exchange for a job’s security is a fine trade. That doesn’t work for me. If there’s anyone who should be wealthy off the sweat of my brow, I’m the first person on that list.

This is also including the assumption that whomever it is who owns the company is making the right decisions, which is absolutely not a given. There’s an illusion of security in a paycheck that comes crashing down as soon as layoffs or bankruptcy are announced (hello, domestic auto manufacturers). I’d rather have control of my fate than leave it in the hands of someone else.

Alignment of Interests

If your company did not need you, you would not exist there. This is a simple, business-driven reality and under no circumstances would I ever begrudge any organization this simple fact. Business is not and should not be charity. Still, think about it. The interest of the business is always and will always be the business. Never you, as an individual. This is an important fact to remember as you commit 96% of your weeks to the job that has hired you. You are the only person you can trust to have your own best interests as a top priority. Rest assured, if the business felt as though it could get more of your time while paying you less, it would surely take that arrangement. It’s just business.

The Game

You show up early, stay late. You take on extra projects and complete them in your spare time. You’re good to your coworkers and can always be relied upon in a pinch. Congratulations, you’re on your way to promotions and potential raises.

The trouble is, if you gave this level of effort for clients instead of your boss, you’d make a whole lot more money.

If you’re following the thread of my argument, you might be thinking “hey, wow, having a job is slavery and my company is screwing me over!”

Two things to note: Having a job gives you incredible opportunities to learn, grow and network while giving you the stability to develop yourself over the long term.

Secondly, unless you signed some sort of contract, you can leave any time you like. If you’re prepared.

So prepare yourself. Maybe I’m young and idealistic, but I firmly believe that the pursuit of things I genuinely love will bring me infinitely more reward than being paid to worry about someone else’s problems. I believe that dedicating the bulk of my time to my own growth, wealth and self-selected challenges, rather than to the development of someone else’s business, is the only conscionable use of my time. I believe that investing myself in an organization whose best interest is something that isn’t me would be to ignore one simple fact: I’m going to die one day. I need to make the most of my life and working for someone else isn’t going to cut it.

You may be following this, finding none of my assessments about having a job objectionable and thinking to yourself that I am, in fact, absurdly difficult and demanding. If that is so I salute you: your expectations for your life are much more easily satisfied.

I’m stuck wanting something else for myself. Thankfully, I’ve got some role models to help me handle this drive for a self-directed life.

Adam Savage

I heard Adam Savage give a talk where he mentioned that his line of work is mostly freelance. This perked up my ears. If you’ve spent any amount of time watching MythBusters, you know that Adam has a singular passion for the creative work that he does. He currently has the best job in the world because he desperately, obsessively craves the joy of making things. He’s incredibly good at it. I’m certain he never could have attained his world-class skills without first loving the work to begin with.

Nick Popovich, Super Repo Man

If you need a defaulted plane retrieved from a deadbeat, you call this guy. Nick had some flight skills and did his first repo on a whim. Now he owns a $20 million business grabbing planes from all corners of the globe. He’s good at it and he enjoys the work. Imagine the waste of his talents if he had stuck to being a traditional pilot and never realized his unique ability to resolve impossible, dangerous situations.

John Gruber

John is obsessive about details in design, typography, user experience and software development. He’s also obsessive about Apple. It shocks me that time and again, John is able to render completely accurate predictions about Apple’s direction and upcoming products. It’s a level of insight no one else on the web can match. It also puts professional investment analysts to shame. Is it incredible that six-figure salaried analysts can’t match the insight and prescience of a guy working from his home on a blog he maintains by himself? A little bit, but it should not be surprising at all. Only a love and passion for his subject matter could have made John the authority on all things Apple on the web.

My mom

I don’t know that she feels great about me saying so here, but it’s important to the legend: my mom didn’t finish high school or go to college. She does have a GED. She’s a minority for whom english is a second language. In pretty much all the ways a single mom can have the chips stacked against her, she had.

My mom loves animals – always has. It’s truly an obsession with her. In my childhood, I can recall the ownership of three ostriches, a donkey, six geese, dozens of chickens, an African Grey Parrot, dozens of dogs, some cats and multiple generations of coral reef tanks with tropical fish that made the house a viable field trip destination.

When I was very young, my mom took a certificate program at the New York School of Dog Grooming. To pay homage to James Herriot, no capped and gowned don ever looked back to his years among the spires of Oxford with more nostalgia than did my mother to her two months at NYSDG.

If I am difficult and demanding, then my mom truly is impossible. Nonetheless, she endured years of working for shitty bosses at shittier dog grooming shops. I don’t know how she did it, but one day, she had enough. I’m not sure where she got the funds, but she put together enough money to lease and renovate a commercial space, adding all of the kennels, baths, and other equipment necessary to provide absurdly clean, professional dog grooming services. For pretty much the rest of my childhood (and to this day), she was self-employed, her own boss. Despite the statistics for small business failure, my mom was and continues to be wildly successful at her trade without any training in business, marketing or finance. She doesn’t need it: she’s just incredibly good at what she does, wanted to provide the best possible service and has always loved her work. Not many other people can offer this. This was enough to ensure I never went hungry as a kid.

The message is clear: if you love the work you do, you can become so good at it that whatever rewards you seek become attainable.

I’ll say it again: I’m going to die one day. I don’t know if it’s next year or many decades from now or somewhere in between. What I do know is that expending my energies within the narrow, limiting, self-denying confines required by the traditional job is a complete waste of whatever existence I have at my disposal.

Aubrey has brought many incredible gifts of insight to my life, but chief of among them is this: you shouldn’t spend any significant amount of time doing something you don’t want to do. I owe so much of my evolution to that crucial realization.

I’m excited to be in business for myself. The nagging feeling that plagued me for so long, the feeling that I was somehow missing the point of life and wasting my time, is completely gone.

I’ve discovered a list of things that I absolutely love to do. I’m already good at some of them while others will require years of time to develop. That’s no problem – the love makes it easier to get through the rough spots. I’ve spent years aggressively growing myself to reach this point. I had no idea where I was heading.

Now I know. I can’t wait to be able to focus on what’s truly important, free from the distraction of minding someone else’s business.