Technovangelism

In my latest attempt to fight burnout, I began experimenting with iPhone development. Joining the developer program was no sweat and there are plenty of articles and tutorials online to help you get coding. But the biggest problem when learning a new language or framework is knowing what to code. Building a Hello World application is great and all, but it hardly teaches you anything you want to learn.

My process for solving this perpetual dilemma is to build something that I actually need or want. For my iPhone project, I chose a Power Hour application. Before deciding this was the right project, I had searched for one in the App Store and was unsuccessful. This either means Apple is against such an app (unlikely), or no one has though of it yet. Either way, it is a simple enough that I can code it within a day, and it will teach me far more about iPhone development than a brief tutorial. Unfortunately, getting the app to my iPod Touch requires it to be put in the App Store which requires a $99 fee. Perhaps others would be willing to pay $0.99 for such an app and could cover the cost for me?

Before the iPhone app was started, I wrote a version in javascript as I had an emergency need for one. Feel free to enjoy an hour of it.