Comments on: Leaving the Classroom

By: Dave Chmura

Dave Chmura — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:17:00 +0000

First Aaron, thank you! You have held true to yourself, and been very generous to us all! The world is better for having you in it!

You might be missed in the classroom, I know that you will always be there…

I am sorry you won’t be there to receive my hug in person!

Dave

By: Heinrich Beck

Heinrich Beck — Sat, 23 May 2009 06:33:26 +0000

I think your claims of retirement from the classroom maybe premature.

At the end of many semesters, I find myself exhausted beyond belief… since I do a lot of jumping around when I am teaching… but after a nice break… I find myself itching to get back in the classroom.

Happy Birthday Aaron!

By: Daniel Jalkut

Daniel Jalkut — Sun, 10 May 2009 03:53:17 +0000

You are leaving the classroom but obviously haven’t given up teaching. The core mission of your business is to teach, and you’ve recognized that the best way to continue fulfilling that mission is to teach teachers, instead of students.

Please keep your brilliant presentation skills fresh by speaking again and repeatedly at conferences such as C4.

By: tmk

tmk — Thu, 07 May 2009 11:35:40 +0000

Hello Aaron,

Happy birthday!

I’m so glad I could benefit from your excellent teaching, the effects of which have been long lasting.
Congratulations for taking the Big Nerd Ranch to its next phase of development.
I’ll miss not meeting you like every year at this year WWDC’09!
And finally, thank you so much for creating the BNR and teaching such a great classes.

= tmk =

By: CJ Kihlbom

CJ Kihlbom — Wed, 06 May 2009 12:46:38 +0000

It’s been four years since I attended the first Cocoa Bootcamp in Germany, and four years since I was at WWDC. This year I’m finally going back to WWDC, and one of the things I was looking forward to was meeting you again. Another time I hope. Does this mean that there won’t be an alumni night at the sports bar?

I completely understand your decision to stop teaching. As I’ve added employees to my company I find that my duties as CEO leaves precious little time for programming. It’s a hard realization (at least for me) but as you said, leading the company is the most important duty.

Thank you for everything you’ve taught me and the rest of the Cocoa community, and good luck with this new phase of BNR!

By: Marco

Marco — Wed, 06 May 2009 12:40:01 +0000

Ciao Aaron,

A belated happy birthday and good luck with your new role. I enjoyed Cocoa Bootcamp in Germany with you as instructor immensely.

Take care,

Marco

By: mandaris

mandaris — Tue, 05 May 2009 17:07:55 +0000

Happy birthday and thank you for being you! You’ve truly and inspiration and I wish you the best in your future.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go hug my little ones!

By: Gavin MacLean

Gavin MacLean — Tue, 05 May 2009 15:37:32 +0000

Aaron,

First of all, although it’s a bit late, Happy Birthday!

Here we’re all big fans of the first book (when my son grows up and gets married I will probably pass my copy on to him as a family heirloom).

I’d like echo Rick’s comments about the optimisation tools, although I wonder if this whole topic deserves a book in its own right! And OpenCL does look seriously cool.

Something else which might be worth considering is a section on Cocoa frameworks. E.g. How to go about writing your own, how are the header files picked up by Xcode etc, how should these be distributed and what gotchas are there? Etc.

Thanks again for all the good work.

Gavin

By: Rick Shafer

Rick Shafer — Fri, 01 May 2009 21:17:01 +0000

Here are a few other areas that you might consider tacking on to the new work, though perhaps some are for yet another volume. I know that many of these are covered to greater or lesser degree in Apple or Web documentation, but I appreciate getting things from your particular perspective (e.g. Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, 3rd ed.).
• Various tools for optimization, monitoring: Shark?, Memory Leak detection.
• Improvements for parallel programming (NSOperation, OpenCL, whateverthehell Grand Central is), and then there is the whole LLVM situation (I’m thinking of someday doing some JIT code emission, running, and optimization… too advanced maybe?). I guess this mean a discussion of threads and threadsafe, though I would think it could be kept at a reasonable level.
• Various “It really IS Unix” libraries, at least a rundown of what they do and where to find more (e.g. BLAS is in there somewhere, but sometimes I’m not sure how to include it). (Hint: I am *NOT* Unix conversant.)
• Distributed Objects? (No I don’t mean the whole EO / WO stuff, but maybe at the surface level.) (I know it’s really difficult(?), but if you could just take a nib and say to someone, OK defrost these guys though they live and interact on a web session, then I would call THAT Web 2.0.)

Oh, yes and Happy birthday.

By: Ryan C. Payne

Ryan C. Payne — Fri, 01 May 2009 03:03:35 +0000

Aaron, I’m very glad that I had the opportunity to have been one of your students last year. The experience was very rewarding and I am now utilizing the knowledge that you imparted on a daily basis.

Looking forward to another trip to the ranch in the future.

Happy Birthday!

By: Robert Rasmussen

Robert Rasmussen — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:19:36 +0000

Happy birthday! You may not be a teaching in a classroom, but you will certainly continue to teach anyone who picks up your books.

Have a great year.

By: Brian Ball

Brian Ball — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:22:04 +0000

Aaron, it’s fun watching your professional development. Thanks for the materials you put out and the class I was able to take with you.

Happy 40th! Keep up the good work on the new property.

By: Jonathan Wight

Jonathan Wight — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:03:33 +0000

WWDC wont be WWDC without the traditional cowboy hat spotting game.

Happy 40th!

By: Eric Maland

Eric Maland — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:40:37 +0000

Happy Birthday!

I hope your time away from the classroom is well spent and rewarding and the Ranch continues to evolve as you envision it - I’m quite sure it will with you behind the wheel.

Also, love the TOC of the sequel - excellent.

By: Chris Ryland

Chris Ryland — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:05:48 +0000

Congrats, Aaron. I hope this new phase is fruitful. But we’ll miss you.

By: Mikey Ward

Mikey Ward — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:01:12 +0000

Aaron, thanks so much for everything. I truly look forward to watching the growth of the new Ranch. It’s a business to be proud of, for sure. All the best!

Happy Birthday!

~Mikey

By: Dave Mark

Dave Mark — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 12:53:34 +0000

Aaron,
First off, Happy Birthday! A sad day for us students, not to have you teaching any more. Makes perfect sense, and a great sign of growth. Congratulations on taking BNR to the next level. You have brought a tremendous amount to our community. Thanks Aaron!
– Dave

By: Nick Forge

Nick Forge — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 12:45:33 +0000

Thanks for all the time and effort you’ve put into education in the Cocoa dev community. Your books have made learning Cocoa/Obj-C enjoyable, instead of frustrating.

The Table of Contents for the new book looks great - internet tutorials and Apple’s documentation are great, but having a comprehensive “walk-through” for this stuff makes a world of difference. I keenly await the release!

Oh, and happy birthday!

By: Jay Cincotta

Jay Cincotta — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 12:39:48 +0000

Hi Aaron,

We’ve never met but I’m a regular reader of your blog since it’s inception. A close friend of mine, Jon Jilg, took a course at the Big Nerd Ranch a couple years ago and turned me on to you.

On your 40th birthday I just wanted to reach out a remind you how your life is sending out positive ripples farther than you know. You’ve certainly are an inspiration to me.

Warm wishes,
Jay

By: jim

jim — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 12:25:25 +0000

Happy birthday, hoss. Welcome to the 40 and over club. Now you have permission to be grouchy about “those crazy kids today.”