Robert,
I think somebody starting out would get a huge benefit from going.
As a more experienced cocoa programmer I felt the sessions were mostly a waste of time. The biggest problem was so much was already discussed at last year's WWDC so a lot of the information was repeated.. you had a lot of basically "we went over this at last year's WWDC but we're going over it again" type comments from the speakers. Or the Quartz drawing session which ended with "the book Programming with Quartz.. covers all this plus more". A lot of the sessions were also extremely basic and it was difficult to tell simply from the session descriptions that it was going to be at such a beginning level.. so many times you had people walking out of sessions after they realized this wasn't what they thought it would be..
Another problem (as can be seen by looking at the session list) is that a lot of the sessions are not for "programmers".. There were a lot of IT related sessions which I think is part of the reason for the large increase in attendees. It was bad enough that when standing in line for the keynote another "real" cocoa programmer asked out loud in line "who here actually writes code?" and there was one person besides myself. When sitting for lunch at a table there seemed to always be at least one IT person..
For experienced "programmers" I think you would get the most benefit if you have queued up a bunch of issues that you'd like answered from apple engineers which sounds like what Scott did. You can quickly recoup your costs if you have some issues you'd like resolved from apple engineers. It is also a benfit to experienced programmers if you'd like to make a lot of contacts.
The 2008 WWDC though might be a completely different story since I expect there to be a lot less repeat from 2007. I would hope there would be some information on 10.6 available by then in which case experienced programmers may have a much better chance of benefitting from a lot of the sessions.
Some other notes that were not apparant to me that Apple should have made clearer:
1) Take your 3 prong cord that attaches to your Macbook/powerbook brick. Do not just take the brick. The brick takes up 2 outlets and many times you won't be able to find an open outlet because of that. Along those lines you may want to take a small extension cord to split an outlet. Outlets were in BIG demand and many times out had to go searching for ones that weren't in use. Apple did provide extra outlets in the session rooms but you had to sit near the walls to reach them.
2) Apple needs to make it clearer when they are providing food. You did get a "breakfast" every morning (which I heard a lot of people didn't catch on to until a few days into the week). Mostly consisted of fancy doughnuts, coffee cake, and related.. You'd also get lunch consisting of a chicken type dish, beef type, or vegetarian. Dinners were also provided but for some reason on wednesday they did not provide dinner. The meals were actually better than I was expecting. For dinner you were even able to get beer and wine... all this served on the second floor of the Moscone Center. The catering service they used did a pretty good job for having to serve so many people.
3) There was also plenty of "drinks".. from coffee, tea, water, and odwalla(sp?) juice. The juice though was mostly a first-come first-served type deal.. One they ran out of that it wasn't restocked until the next day.
4) If you are leaving on friday but have to check out of your hotel before the last session you are going to take ends, Apple provided a luggage check-in service at the convention center.. you just had to pick it up before 7pm. Many hotels also provide this service depending on which one you are at so check with them.
Not having been in San Francisco before or california in general I was somehwat disturbed by the number of homeless people. It might be "normal" in most big cities but seemed like a lot compared to when I lived in Chicago. Because of this you may wish to make sure your hotel is easy/safe to get to at night if you are walking alone. It's sad that we spend billions of dollars to blow up people in another country but have people here in the U.S. begging for spare change.
by David — Jun 16
I think somebody starting out would get a huge benefit from going.
As a more experienced cocoa programmer I felt the sessions were mostly a waste of time. The biggest problem was so much was already discussed at last year's WWDC so a lot of the information was repeated.. you had a lot of basically "we went over this at last year's WWDC but we're going over it again" type comments from the speakers. Or the Quartz drawing session which ended with "the book Programming with Quartz.. covers all this plus more". A lot of the sessions were also extremely basic and it was difficult to tell simply from the session descriptions that it was going to be at such a beginning level.. so many times you had people walking out of sessions after they realized this wasn't what they thought it would be..
Another problem (as can be seen by looking at the session list) is that a lot of the sessions are not for "programmers".. There were a lot of IT related sessions which I think is part of the reason for the large increase in attendees. It was bad enough that when standing in line for the keynote another "real" cocoa programmer asked out loud in line "who here actually writes code?" and there was one person besides myself. When sitting for lunch at a table there seemed to always be at least one IT person..
For experienced "programmers" I think you would get the most benefit if you have queued up a bunch of issues that you'd like answered from apple engineers which sounds like what Scott did. You can quickly recoup your costs if you have some issues you'd like resolved from apple engineers. It is also a benfit to experienced programmers if you'd like to make a lot of contacts.
The 2008 WWDC though might be a completely different story since I expect there to be a lot less repeat from 2007. I would hope there would be some information on 10.6 available by then in which case experienced programmers may have a much better chance of benefitting from a lot of the sessions.
Some other notes that were not apparant to me that Apple should have made clearer:
1) Take your 3 prong cord that attaches to your Macbook/powerbook brick. Do not just take the brick. The brick takes up 2 outlets and many times you won't be able to find an open outlet because of that. Along those lines you may want to take a small extension cord to split an outlet. Outlets were in BIG demand and many times out had to go searching for ones that weren't in use. Apple did provide extra outlets in the session rooms but you had to sit near the walls to reach them.
2) Apple needs to make it clearer when they are providing food. You did get a "breakfast" every morning (which I heard a lot of people didn't catch on to until a few days into the week). Mostly consisted of fancy doughnuts, coffee cake, and related.. You'd also get lunch consisting of a chicken type dish, beef type, or vegetarian. Dinners were also provided but for some reason on wednesday they did not provide dinner. The meals were actually better than I was expecting. For dinner you were even able to get beer and wine... all this served on the second floor of the Moscone Center. The catering service they used did a pretty good job for having to serve so many people.
3) There was also plenty of "drinks".. from coffee, tea, water, and odwalla(sp?) juice. The juice though was mostly a first-come first-served type deal.. One they ran out of that it wasn't restocked until the next day.
4) If you are leaving on friday but have to check out of your hotel before the last session you are going to take ends, Apple provided a luggage check-in service at the convention center.. you just had to pick it up before 7pm. Many hotels also provide this service depending on which one you are at so check with them.
Not having been in San Francisco before or california in general I was somehwat disturbed by the number of homeless people. It might be "normal" in most big cities but seemed like a lot compared to when I lived in Chicago. Because of this you may wish to make sure your hotel is easy/safe to get to at night if you are walking alone. It's sad that we spend billions of dollars to blow up people in another country but have people here in the U.S. begging for spare change.