Leaving the Classroom
Apr 30th, 2009
Today is my 40th birthday, and I have an announcement: I’m not teaching any more.
I love teaching, and my students have been truly excellent — motivated, creative, fun. However, as the company has grown, the weeks that I spend teaching have become more and more problematic. When I return from a week of teaching, I rush around trying to write new materials, mentor the other instructors, and find new classes. Well, it turns out that these tasks that I have been shirking are actually the most important responsibilities that I have.
I must stop teaching to create time to write new materials, mentor my instructors, and find new classes/instructors. Also, there are two small boys who need me to spend more time around the house.
This change has been a long time coming. In preparation for this day, I’ve assembled a team of excellent instructors to take my place at the front of the classroom. Scott Ritchie and Juan Pablo Claude will be teaching desktop Cocoa development. Joe Conway and Brian Hardy will be teaching iPhone development. Mark Fenoglio will teach C and Objective-C. And I will be the puppet master. (”Bwah-ha-ha-ha”)
I will teach the three classes that are currently on the schedule under my name: June 13 - 19 in Atlanta, July 13 - 17 in Germany, and July 27 - 31 in Atlanta. (Click here to sign up for one of these classes)
Also, Juan Pablo and I are finishing the sequel to “Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X”. It is not a book yet (and won’t be for at least a year), but Juan Pablo will be teaching it in Atlanta the week of July 13 - 17. Contact Jaye Boyer to reserve a seat: (404) 931-3359 (We are still adding material to the book, but here is the state of the Table of Contents. We are taking suggestions for things you would like to see added to the class.)
I will not be at WWDC this year, but Scott, Juan Pablo, Joe, and Brian will. They will have on cowboy hats. If you see them, please introduce yourself. They are all brilliant programmers and genuinely kind men. I would not leave my students in the hands of anyone but the most knowledgeable, articulate, and patient instructors.
If you are one of my students, I sincerely hope that the stuff I taught you has proved useful and that the experience itself was satisfying. I can assure you: the eight years that I have spent at the front of the classroom have been truly gratifying to me. Thank you for this wonderful opportunity.
Happy birthday, hoss. Welcome to the 40 and over club. Now you have permission to be grouchy about “those crazy kids today.”
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
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!
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
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
Congrats, Aaron. I hope this new phase is fruitful. But we’ll miss you.
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.
WWDC wont be WWDC without the traditional cowboy hat spotting game.
Happy 40th!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
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!
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
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!
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 =
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.
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!
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