Last Friday, at the iOS developers workshop, we started discussions with looking at a Geiger counter that Andrew had built from a kit. Several groups clustered around iPhones or iPads looking at new apps that are being developed.
Our topic of discussion was the recently open sourced iPhone app called Brushes, a rich set of drawing tools. One of the really interesting things about looking at this large iPhone application was watching experienced developers dig into it to figure out how it worked. I hadn’t really thought about the power of the MVC framework that one uses to build iPhone apps, but part of the beauty lies in the separation of presentation, user interaction, and actual application work. The model contains the meat, and starting there one can get to an understanding much more quickly then if the user interaction and layout were embedded in that process. I was also struck by the generosity of the Open Source community in releasing projects that have taken hundreds of man hours to build.
We capped the meeting with a short puzzle of how the Interface Builder and programmatic style settings can interact badly. Steven shared the process of beating his head against a font change that just wouldn’t happen, and also gave us a glimpse of a beautiful new app he’s working on.
