Review: The first three lectures from Stanford's iPhone Application Development

Last week we informed you of Dan Stober's article on Stanford University's free course iPhone Application Programming. I've had the pleasure of watching the lecture and viewing the associated slides as PDFs from iTunes's iTunes U.

I subscribed to the podcast and sync it with my iPhone. Having the materials with me allows me to study on the go. It's a little bit of a mindgasm. I am quite pleased with the depth and quality of the information presented by Evan Doll and Alan Cannistraro thus far.

In addition, Stanford's website has a course information page with handouts, assignments, sample code and walkthroughs are posted. This makes the experience just that much more immersive and rich. It's like they said, "this is cool but how can we make it better." And they did just that. Thank you guys. I even enjoyed being "Rick-rolled" in the first lecture. (^_^)

Anyone who has experience in a similar OOP language and is interested in iPhone application development you would be a, dare I say it, a fool if you do not take the time to at least listen to the information provided. But, if you do not have experience developing applications using an OOP language I would suggest you pick up a book and start studying. Don did a very nice review of Erica Sadun's The iPhone Developer's Cookbook here. When you finish with the book subscribe to the podcast, download the associated materials and proceed at your own pace.

I'd also like to say, even if you're not really thinking about developing applications for the iPhone or iPod Touch or things Objective-C related but you are a software developer, you too should take a look. It's nice to have a data point; you'll never know what you might glen from it. And who knows, as my friend Carmen of Ignite PR says, you may just come over to the light.