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A week with Academy Class

Posted: 12/12/11

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At the beginning of December 2011 I was fortunate to be invited to Academy Class's HQ in Waterloo to spend a week training with them on their iOS Jumpstart Course. Conventionally I'm wary of courses, but as Objective-C syntax looked like hieroglyphics in comparison to the modern programming languages I work with (C#, AS3.0, Java) I felt a classroom introduction may well be necessary!

The Academy Class training suite was spacious and well-equipped, with new iMacs and companion screens to allow you to closely watch as the tutor coded.

The course content was well-considered and presented in a digestible and concise manner by David Arnold. David did a great job at explaining with sufficient detail that allowed the penny to drop by itself, whilst resisting the temptation of explaining to nth degree. A common complaint of 'trainers' is that they simply work through a course manual, conveying little more than you can read in the manual yourself - ask a question that isn't in the manual you're stuffed! David was not like this. He displayed a clear interest in the subject matter, and was able to substantiate this with plentiful supplementary knowledge. The class threw a few questions and all were either answered on the spot, or followed up after some lunchtime investigation. In the end, everyone came away confident that they were able to continue learning about the iOS platform on their own. I came away quite the enthusiast (as I always am with a new challenge!!) and just a few weeks on from that I'm delivering production-quality Objective-C code.

I found Academy Class a great environment to learn in - a hive of activity during the breaks; quiet and studious the rest of the time. All in all my time was well-spent there and I'll certainly be giving them a call if there's another technology I need to get up and running with in a hurry.

Find out more about Academy Class

Keywords for this post: academy, class, training, iphone, ios, objective-c, london, waterloo