Theocacao: Wrap-Up From Leopard and Cocoa Bindings Talk

Wrap-Up From Leopard and Cocoa Bindings Talk

We had a fantastic turnout last night at CocoaHeads — the most attendees I can remember seeing there, and certainly the most in the last year. I did a head count at one point and at least a quarter of the people there were first-timers.

Michael Jurewitz from Apple DTS gave a great presentation on his TwoManyControllers example, which is hugely helpful if you're trying to do multiple levels of to-many sets using Cocoa Bindings and NSArrayController. The sample is also notable in that it's not just a bare Xcode project. It includes diagrams which explain the bindings between views and controllers.

Deric Horn from Apple Application Technologies Evangelism gave an excellent summary of the new APIs coming in Leopard, spending most of his time on Core Animation then glancing quickly at some of the other new additions. There were quite a few questions and comments which tells me people are interested in this stuff.

I had some fancy Cocoa Bindings and Core Data examples to show at the end. I pretty much had to throw them together at the last minute, but I'll post them as soon as it is practical to do so. I think I at least gave enough starting points to get people heading in the right direction.

While all of that alone would be enough, a number of Apple frameworks engineers were kind enough to hang around after the presentations to spend some time fielding questions from attendees.

I've been talking to Deric for the last few months about jumpstarting the local chapter of CocoaHeads so that it can be a flagship model for the other chapters. I think we saw the beginnings of that paying off last night. Big thanks to Deric, Michael and everyone else who showed up to participate.

The meetings are the second Thursday of every month, so we look forward to seeing you all on April 12. Please sign up for the CocoaHeads Silicon Valley mailing list if you'd like to receive reminders about upcoming meetings. If you're working on an application and would like to present it, send me an email (sstevenson at .Mac).

Wrap-Up From Leopard and Cocoa Bindings Talk
Posted Mar 9, 2007 — 19 comments below

StuFF mc — Mar 10, 07 3691

I personally hope these are signs of Apple being more opened to the community. I can't stop dreaming about an Apple being so opened as Microsoft is, with Channel . Of course, MS is sometime too open ;) but Apple is too often "not open at all" :( Anyways with Leopard we're already seeing the number of developers checking Cocoa growing, cool thing !

Nithin — Mar 10, 07 3692

As one of those first time attendees I'd like to thank all those responsible for setting up this event.

I was arguing about Cocoa Bindings versus the bindings in WPF with a co-worker, so I saw this as an opportunity to get more ammo for the discourse. However, I wouldn't rule out attending more meetings depending on the subject matter.

As far as interesting subect matter, I am about to start developing a game framework in Cocoa and would like to know how Leopard would influence the design. For example, would the Garbage collector be aggressive enough in cleaning up unused objects? I'd like know how Core Image and Core Animation can be applied to OpenGL views.

Scott Stevenson — Mar 10, 07 3693

I personally hope these are signs of Apple being more opened to the community. I can't stop dreaming about an Apple being so opened as Microsoft is
I don't think something like Channel 9 would really fit the Apple culture well. The Leopard Techtalks, on the other hand, do seem to fit well because the message is much more clear. A much better signal-to-noise ratio.

I think that interview you did with Robert Scoble did a good job of highlighting the differences between the two approaches. Things that work well for Microsoft don't directly translate to Apple.

There's been quite a lot of community activity with Mac developers, and I think Apple is looking to make use of that, but I think they're probably going to do it their own way.

Scott Stevenson — Mar 10, 07 3694

However, I wouldn't rule out attending more meetings depending on the subject matter
What would you (or anyone) like to see at the meetings? More How-to sessions? Presentations from developers?

I am about to start developing a game framework in Cocoa and would like to know how Leopard would influence the design
I'd love to answer that for you but I don't have experience developing game engines. You might ask that on Apple's cocoa-dev mailing list.

Pat Garner — Mar 10, 07 3695

I was a first time attendee as well. I'd been wanting to check it out for a while now, but it is a bit of a jaunt from Santa Rosa.

However, after finally making down there I can say it was well worth the trip and am totally looking forward to next month's meeting. Just being in the same room with that many people digging on cocoa and OS X development is pretty cool on it's own. Adding the cool cocoa tech tips, tricks, and tutorials along with the presence of the Apple engineers really made it a must attend event for cocoa developers.

What are the chances we'll get to have Apple engineers at future Cocoaheads meetings?

As far as meeting topics go, I'd have to say, as a cocoa addict (really an OS X development addict) I'd be stoked to see any part of the breadth of OS X development with cocoa covered. Really, I liked the feeling I got that no matter what the main topic of the evening is, it seems there'll always be a little room to work in some discussion concerning whatever cocoa tech happens to be consuming you at the moment. Even if that happens to take place with fellow attendees before or after the main event.

BTW, nice trick with NSValueTransformer. Your idea was a pretty fresh approach and it was cool to be exposed to the use of something like NSValueTransformer for that purpose. There are so many cool classes in cocoa, it's easy to miss them or forget some of them are there if they're not shoved in your face some times.

Thanks for a great meeting Scott!

Philip Orr — Mar 11, 07 3700

Hi there Scott.

I'm sooo jealous of you all out there and these Cocoaheads meets that you all have. We organized a umber over here in Belfast which had a max total of 3, that one of those was myself.

It's great to see the likes of Apple coming out to give a talk on new technologies and I'm sure the atmosphere most have been something else.

At least I did manage to get to Germany for a week for the Big Nerd Ranch, which was fantastic by the way, but to constantly be able to look forward to monthly meets like that must be great.

Any chance of even getting those meeting recorded and put out as a video podcast for the rest of us?

Philip

Marco Bottaro — Mar 11, 07 3701

Hi Scott,

So exciting to hear about the success of your initiative. Too bad here in Prague Cocoa seems a little dead. I attended the same Big Nerd Ranch as Philip (Hi there mate, how's the coding?) to get in touch with some fellow European Cocoa programmers, but after that I felt a great emptiness once I got back here with no one to share my passion with.

All this to say I second Philip's request: any chance of getting videos of the sessions? Thanks for considering it and kudos for making the meetings happen.

Cheers,

Marco

Scott Stevenson — Mar 11, 07 3703

What are the chances we'll get to have Apple engineers at future Cocoaheads meetings?
Since it's something they do in their free time, it's ultimately their decision to show up. I'll do my best to let them know that they're appreciated.

Philip Orr — Mar 11, 07 3704

Hi Marco, hows Prague? My brother is just back from there.

The coding is doing great, very busy and now into reverse engineering software to get a number of Hacks to work. We are hoping to release our first application within the next few weeks with a number of others to follow over the coming months.

How's your work doing, hope your keeping busy.

I think the more exposure we get to the real brains behind the development of Cocoa applications the more people like us will really want to get involved. I do hope that these Cocoaheads meetings do become video podcasts as I know for one, that I shall be in the line for signing up.

Philip

Brad — Mar 12, 07 3705

What would you (or anyone) like to see at the meetings?

Cameras. =)

Since I'm 1500 miles away it would be nice to have a video podcast of the meetings. Doesn't even have to be anything fancy. A single camera on a tripod pointed in the right direction with no editing would work for me.

Paolo Manna — Mar 12, 07 3708

Marco,
it's possible the Cocoa community in Europe is silent right now, but I can assure you there are quite a number of us around here! Actually, we also had something similar to CocoaHeads (used to be called Wocoa) for a number of years, but not for some time lately...

Sarat Kongara — Mar 12, 07 3709

I like to add my vote for the video or audio podcast of the event or at least a brief summary with links to relevant information (products, frameworks, sample code, services, websites etc) that is discussed.

Blain — Mar 12, 07 3712

I thought I saw one laptop+camera at the meeting, and I thought it was for a video posting intent. Or did I misremember?

leeg — Mar 14, 07 3730

+1 for the jealous European count [Oxford, UK] ;-) There's a uk-mac-dev meeting once a month, which seems to be mainly attended by Carbon people :(

Cliff L. Biffle — Mar 14, 07 3733

I was also a first-time attendee last Thursday, and will definitely be back. (I must admit, when I sent you the Xcode DMG I had no idea you were Scott-of-Theocacao Scott. I've been following your blog for a couple years now.)

As a Cocoaheads n00b, there are three main things drawing me back:
1. Getting to see other developers' neat solutions to things. Programming is more fun as a social activity.
2. The chance to show off, in case I create a neat solution to something. :-)
3. The freeform discussion at the end.

I don't know if the discussion was typical, but I learned a lot, both from the Apple employees and others.

Thanks!

aquaibm — Mar 16, 07 3736

I am a newbie of Cocoa programming in China, I am so jealous of you all out there too. If there are any video/audio podcasts of the meetings, I will really appreciate that:)

jjoonathan — Mar 17, 07 3738

I would be interested in some sort of video as well. Unfortunately I live too far away from California to attend :(

Philip Orr — Mar 19, 07 3742

Well seems that everyone's in agreement here, that a video podcast of the event would be right up there.

So, Steve, I reckon that the masses have spoken, well a small representation thereof at least. Use the cocoaBlogs as the launch pad for the podcasts. At least it's along the same lines.

Phil

Philip Orr — Mar 19, 07 3743

Well seems that everyone's in agreement here, that a video podcast of the event would be right up there.

So, Scott, I reckon that the masses have spoken, well a small representation thereof at least. Use the cocoaBlogs as the launch pad for the podcasts. At least it's along the same lines.

Phil

Sory dont't know where Steve came from :-/

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