Recently I started working on a new project for which there will be an iPhone app. So far I have found 2 hidden nuggets I would like to share with any other iPhone developers out there that may be reading this.

iPhone – Parse XML to custom objects

This simple set of classes very easily allows you to map your XML coming in off of a URL (Like a REST based service) to an object.

SQL Lite Persistent Objects

This is basically a simplistic ORM (object relational mapper) written in objective c and meant for the iPhone.

As I discover more tidbits I will try to make note of them here. Also I will try to blog in a bit more detail about them and my project in near future.

Had an issue with some css, div’s and tables tonight so Adrian and I went up to Starbucks and did some reverse pair programming. Generally pair programming involves one computer for 2 dudes. We had Adrian rocking on both Macbook Pro’s while I was on my Macbook Air.

(Image taken from Lawrence Whittemore’s photos)

I was reading Hanselman or ScottHa as he calls himself these days. (I’m not sure he has enough power to start doing that just yet ^_^ )

Anyways the MVC stuff they are working on looks amazingly cool. They presented it for the first time at the ALT.NET conference and I think it was well received. If this is as good as it looks Rails might be derailed! Take a look at the following link for more information.

ScottGu MVC Presentation and ScottHa Screencast from ALT.NET Conference

I’ve had alot of people asking me what a war room is. See the expression on those faces…. THAT my friends, is a software project war room.

I figured I’d put the word out that I am looking for a part time asp.net web developer and/or designer. I have been working through alot of contractors lately and it would be nice to land someone a little more steadily. Most work would be done remotely however office space may be available (in the Grand Rapids area) if needed. Having any number of the following skillsets might make you the right candidate.

*ASP.NET Development experience (C# and/or VB.NET)
*Strong HTML Skillset
*An artistic clue…(not found easily in developers…)
*Great interpersonal skills
*Desire to learn and grow your current skillset

If you are interested please drop me a comment here or e-mail me.

Interfaces tend to be one of those things that lose attention in the heat of development. For this reason I will hereby declare my lack of experience with creating interfaces. I have implemented (inherited) quite often but it was only when I was asked to create an interface at one of my current contracts that I realized that you cannot have a static method be part of an interface. The reason for this is that an interface is a reference type and it only contains abstract members. Now remembering back to my OOP track at GVSU I remembered distinctly that you can’t have static abstract classes regardless of the scenario and how much it seems to make sense.

I’ve been doing a lot of talking to some peers recently about what it takes to be a developer as well as what it takes to stay at the top of your game. I will reiterate that I am talking about developers or “software engineers” rather than programmers or “script kiddies” who program for fun but either cannot or choose not to make it their fulltime profession.

I hope to get some intelligent discussion going on here about this. My intent is to offer suggestions in my next series of posts about what I believe it takes and maybe I am off base and I would love it if you could steer me in the right direction. My opinions come strictly from my experiences in the industry.  At this point in time I haven’t had much exposure (blogs aside) to the professional development world outside of Michigan. I would like to think that are some core qualities that every developer possess, however I am sure this varies based on the industries and regional areas that the developer resides in.

I frequently read http://www.joelonsoftware.com and I just caught a post linking me to an article he wrote for Inc.

Anyone who knows about Joel has probably read about his great intership program. This articles goes into the details of that program.

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20070501/column-guest.html

Enjoy!

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Yup that is VB.NET code using .Net 3.0 and LINQ and I am loving it. More to come (possibly a review) when I finish my first test project using this.