Subversion

Version tracking is something that I have yet to come across in my professional career, but something that has always seemed like such a no brainer and something I wished to add to my skill set.

After some research on Version tracking I decided that Subversion (SVN) seemed to be the best bet, as it is the most common and also open source.

There seemed to be a choice to make, host the repository on my local system, or use a hosted system. As I like offsite backups (and as a photographer have a hard drive full of images) I decided to go with a hosted system. The website svnhostingcomparison.com proved useful, it allows you to choose the features you want and filter the packages available on these features. Using this tool I decided to go for the free package from Assembla.

After having set up the server I needed to link it up with my code, Xcode, the Apple IDE I have been using for OSX and iOS development, has SVN support built in, which makes things easier as did the following tutorials:
http://maczealots.com/tutorials/xcode-svn/
http://www.uchidacoonga.com/?tag=assemblacom

I was set up fairly quickly and with the painless integration with Xcode I was able to import my existing projects, then due to the peculiar way SVN works check it straight out again and continue working on it. My next steps with SVN will be to link it in with Eclipse, although that may not be as simple as using it with Xcode.

First iOS app

After installing Xcode and the iOS SDK I decided to reacquaint myself with Xcode, so followed the "Tour of Xcode" tutorial from within Xcode, although my tip would be to read it from your browser so you can use fast app switching easily. The guide was a useful refresher and you end up with a "Hello world" Cocoa application, which in my case was the first time I'd written specifically for OS X.
A little bit bored of reading and armed with my refreshed Xcode knowledge I decided to jump straight in and follow the tutorial from the first session of the Stanford University iPhone Application Development course on iTunes U and made a basic app that uses a slider to change the value of a label:

My next step will be to follow the "Your First iOS Application" from the Apple Developer Center, however that appears to be a bit more in depth and requires a bit more reading of their documentation, which although a bit boring I'm sure will be worth it in the end.

iOS Development

I have decided to give myself a kick into action and get back into writing software, seeing as my day job seems to be more paper pushing than coding these days.

After my experiment with LUA/Lightroom failed last year, I wanted to do something that would be both useful in the real world and most importantly, would keep my interest. My initial thought was to really brush up my XHTML/CSS and PHP (this will probably be my next project) but iOS development has really caught my attention. I am a fan of Apple products, especially the iPhone, my iPhone 4 hardly ever leaves my side, so I went over to developer.apple.com and signed up to their developer program, albeit just the free one for now and installed XCode and the iPhone SDK.

I am familiar with Xcode, having used it to do some C programming when I was at uni, but the language used for iOS development, Objective-C, as well as the COCOA framework are new to me. Objective-C is an object-oriented language, which is something which I haven't touched on since uni, however the Object-Oriented Programming with Objective-C guide on the iOS developer centre was quite helpful in refreshing the basics.

In addition to the Apple supplied learning material, I am following the Stanford University iPhone Application Development course on iTunes U, which does actually feels like I am being taught, rather than teaching myself.

My next steps are going to be more reading and hopefully creating a basic "Hello world" app over the next few days...