[Luis:] I’ve been getting a good number of visitors reading about The Life, so I thought I’d get some other folks to offer their perspectives on living It.
Brian Cooke is a good friend of mine. He has started doing The Life part-time with his software company RoobaSoft. He’s written a cool and free Mac app called rooVid Lite, which lets you convert iMovies and other video to other video formats. There will be a more full featured shareware version coming later this year. I asked him to kick off this series with his take on The Life.
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[Brian:] How I Started Writing Software for OS X
I purchased my first G4 Tower in February 2004 from some guy in a White Hen Pantry parking lot and exchanged about $500 for the Apple goodness. When I got home and loaded Panther it was love at first click. However, it wasn’t until July ’05 that I had the desire to learn to write software for OS X. This post will focus on the eight months from picking up Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X to releasing rooVid Lite 1.0 describing how I got here and some advice along the way. One quick note before we begin: Prior to my endeavor into OS X programming I was already being payed to program. I knew C, C++, Java. I was comfortable in UNIX and a handful of scripting languages. I did not know Objective-C nor had I any experience with a framework as complete as Cocoa, Java was the closest I had come.
Go Learn
In July ’05 I decided I wanted to write software for OS X and I wanted to use Cocoa. I snagged Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X and I was off. About halfway through the book I decided decided to write a contraction timer that would graph the duration of each contraction and the time between each contraction. Lesson #1: when your wife is in labor, she doesn’t want you to run for your iBook.
Slightly more useful was my second attempt at an application. It was a utility to erase DVDs and then launch the app of your choice. Much like the contraction timer, this was something I made use of, but very few people would appreciate. Lesson #2: Write applications you need.
Get Support
It was the day after Thanksgiving and the wife and kids and I packed up and were driving to go cut down our Christmas tree. Along the way I told my wife that I was going to try to write an app that I needed, but that I was also going to try to release it to the public. I explained why I needed rooVid and why others might be willing to give me money for it. She was resistant, but eventually she seemed to give in and agreed it might be something others would want. Lesson #3: If you have a counterpart, get her/his support, it’ll prove invaluable when you’re chugging along and need a good kick, or just someone to talk to.
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[Luis:] I’ll post Part 2 of Brian’s Take on The Life tomorrow.
I was chuckling about the contraction timer comment. I had written a lap timer for track cycling (kilo and pursuit). While my wife was in labor I pulled it out and started timing the contractions. Big mistake. Huge. Especially since the thing about my lap timer, it told you how off you were from your goal and mean lap times, which as it turned out was an even HUGER mistake. “honey, that last contraction was 22 seconds off the pace … “. Was that the sound of an idiot wanna-be-cocoa programmer getting pounded? Why yes, yes it was.
This is a great post. Even though I work as a designer, I have been coding cocoa in secret for a few years, and now I’m looking for some way to get into the “pro” coding life too. I’m really anxious for the second part of this interview.