iPhone App Development Classes

My latest iPhone/iPod touch app, Whiteboard Lite, is now available in the iTunes App Store.

This semester, I’m a Lab Assistant (also sometimes called a Teaching Assistant or TA) for the new ITP 499 iPhone App Development class here at USC (the University of Southern California). The most well-known iPhone App Dev class done so far was at Stanford University (CS 193P); props to them for posting some of their course materials online.

As far I knew, USC was only the 2nd school to offer such a class. But today I discovered that there are a few other schools with similar programs. On Ars Technica, juancferrer notes that “Mississippi State University is having an iPhone class this semester.” xtremesniper says that “Seneca College in Canada has also begun an OS X and iPhone development course this semester.”

And TechGeek says “RIT is currently offering its first iPhone class using the iTouch. We’re about half way through the quarter. Boy are they a pain to set up the certificates for. Be a miracle if we ever get them working.(52 pages of cookie cutter instructions) yuck!”

Someone who also appears to be from USC, Ricardo Chavarria, said 5 days ago that he “taught an iPhone Game Development class last semester at USC. It is being taught this semester as well!” That’s news to me. While I know USC has a large games program, I haven’t heard of much in the way of iPhone development. Now that I think about it, though, I did hear mention of Ricardo. I’d like to get in touch with him. Perhaps we can collaborate on something.

Universities outside the USA are getting into it, too. wildbomb says:

Here at the TUM (Technische Universität München) in Munich, Germany, we had an iPhone programming course.
It went from April 2008 to August 2008.

The planning even started long before the official SDK beta release. We then worked our way through all beta releases.

That might be the earliest example I’ve heard of!

What are your thoughts? Post a comment below.

7 Responses to “iPhone App Development Classes”

  1. Katy says:

    Wonder if the market will get flooded too many apps, or if there’ll be a next big thing that takes over.

  2. Funny Stuff says:

    I wish my school offered an iPhone development class. That would be so cool to take as an elective (I need 4 CS electives at my school). I think I might look into learning how to develop for it and I’ll check out the Stanford link you posted.

  3. Do you know of any iPhone development courses or instructors in NYC? Thank you.
    Janna Glasser

    • Louis St-Amour says:

      Janna, while looking in to iPhone app courses, it appears New York University offers an iPhone app course, etc.

  4. Ben Gotow says:

    Hey Elliot! They’re actually in the process of setting up a “smartphone programming” class at Vanderbilt, too. I think they’re planning to focus on Android though, because most of the students already have experience in Java and Eclipse. It makes the material more manageable for a single semester class, I guess? Hopefully they’ll work in the iPhone and Objective-C for students that are interested in it – we’ll see. The Android SDK / Docs / Experience isn’t really up to par with the iPhone’s yet, I think.

    P.S. Have you had any thoughts on porting Whiteboard to Android? Somebody asked me today if I would port Layers — haven’t decided yet.

  5. Mississippi State University will have three different iPhone-related classes in Fall 2009:
    1. an incoming freshman-only class that requires no programming background and that will hopefully entice students to consider computing majors
    2. a senior-level iPhone programming class (which was first taught in Spring 2009, with 50 students)
    3. an iPhone Entrepreneurship class that is a business class and requires that student groups “take an app to the market”; this class focuses on the entrepreneurial aspects of having an idea, developing it, and making it a financial success.

  6. Jason S. says:

    Would you know if any Schools in Colorado have iphone app dev. courses? Im very interested in beginning to create my ideas

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