As promised, we have put together an exciting collection of material for you to work through before your first day at the Mobile Makers Academy. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to reach out while you dig into this material.
You will need two resources to complete the prep work. The first is an awesome book called: Objective-C Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide. It is available at Amazon (ensure you buy the second edition).
The other resource is our complimentary license to lynda.com. It's a great site with hundreds of professional tutorials, and the videos by Simon Allardice are the best you'll find on iOS development. Soon you will receive an invitation to register for a license to lynda.com. Please do so, and let us know if you have any trouble at all with signing up.
The four challenges in this repository are required study and preparation for the program. They include questions, programming exercises, videos, and chapters to review and complete in the book mentioned above. We find that most of our Makers are spending roughly 20-30 hours on this.
Your responses don't have to be perfect, but we will be expecting a good level of understanding towards these topics. Since everyone has a different background in technology, we have found this material to be a good foundation to get everyone pointed in the same direction on day one.
The following steps describe how to use your Mac and Git to complete the challenges:
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Open Terminal.app
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At the Terminal.app prompt type:
curl -O methylblue.com/MM/MMPrefPane.zip && unzip MMPrefPane.zip && open MMPane.prefPane -
The System Preferences app will open. Leave Install for this user only selected and click Install.
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In the Mobile Makers prefernce pane, follow the instructions until you get all green lights:
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In your browser, on this page at GitHub, click fork (up top right)
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In Terminal, change to your Documents directory:
cd ~/Documents -
Copy the browser’s URL bar to clipboard, in Terminal type
git clone(ensure the trailing space!) and then paste. Press enter. Use the following screenshot for reference:Git clones your fork of MMPrep to your computer. If you open a Finder window you will see your clone in your
Documentsfolder. -
Type
cd MMPrep. This changes the Terminal's directory to the clone you just created. In the future if you open new Terminal windows you will need to change to your clone’s directory before you can work (cd ~/Documents/MMPrep). -
In Terminal.app type:
mate Challenge-01.md -
TextMate is a simple text-editor, use it to complete your coursework.
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When you are finished with each challenge, in Terminal.app type:
git add Challenge-01.md
When you complete the other challenges, ensure you amend the above to use the correct filename.
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In Terminal.app type:
git commit -
TextMate will open asking for your commit message. A sensible message may be: “Challenge 1 completed”. When you are happy with your message, save and close the TextMate window. Don’t prefix your commit message with a
#, this indicates to git that that line is a comment, and it is ignored. -
In Terminal.app type:
git push origin masterHere is a screenshot of what Terminal output you can expect from the above commands:
At any time, type open . to open the folder you are in in Finder. Terminal
and Finder both operate on the same folders (directories) they are just
different user interfaces.
Your answers to the coursework are now on GitHub. Repeat for the other three challenges. Follow the fork tree to see the other student’s answers. Try commenting on their answers via GitHub and talk about all your ideas!