Software Developers Forum
23 Sept 2009
Cubberly Community Center, Palo Alto

Neal Goldstein is the author of “IPhone Application Development for Dummies”
I have found that these “for Dummies” books are not correct nor useful, but Goldstein seemed to know his stuff and explain it well.

I teach and recommend the use of Google App Engine, a free service provided to web application developers. Goldstein expressed extreme dissatisfaction with Google’s service level agreement provided for App Engine, which may keep businesses from making use of App Engine.

He had some useful ways of explaining some of the concepts that I teach:

1) Frameworks: “You don’t use a framwork, it uses you.” This is true because as developers, we must fit our work into an existing framework, in exactly the position that the framework expects it to go. So in order to take advantage of a framework, we have to learn its structure and expectations and adhere to them precisely.

2) Model/View/Controller: The analogy goes like this
TV screen is the View, it doesn’t care what is being sent to it, it just puts it on the screen.
Cable box or antenna is the Controller, it just sends the programming to the TV.
The program that you watch is the Model, it contains the content you asked for.

3) Subclassing: To subclass another class is like taking a deuce coupe and turning it into a hot rod, except you still have the deuce coups to use when you want to.

For me to study:
Delegation in OOP – Goldstein says it is like composition, though I think it is more like Interface. He says it is probably more important then inheritance.