Diploma in Apple Development ๐๐ฉ๐ปโ๐ป: Coding One: Lecture 1: Introduction.
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๐๐ป Hi! I'm Joel. My pronouns are he/him. I'm 43 and I live in London near Epping Forest with my fiancรฉe and one cat.
Welcome to the Creative Computing Institute!
Welcome to the Diploma in Apple Development ๐๐ฉ๐ปโ๐ป!
This is a brand new course, just one year old, so I'd love to hear all your feedback - please please please DM me on Instagram with your thoughts, or email me, via my website, or just message me on the CCI Slack. I'm particularly looking out for good YouTube channels, so please share those if you find them.
By the end of this lecture, we'll have learnt about:
- How to confirm your attendance in class by using the Seats Mobile App.
- Introduction to the course and each other via the Diploma homepage, GitHub readme.md and the GitHub wiki.
- How to make use of the Disability services at CCI.
- How to make use of the Library services at CCI.
- How you can get support around the cost of living crisis.
- Selection of course representatives.
- 10 thoughts for the Future.
- My expectations of you through this year.
- Tutorials - every Monday morning.
- Important methods for succeeding on this course (and in general)
- My background.
- What is Creative Computing?
- What are we going to learn?
- Other coding resources.
- Some situating yourself in the world resources.
- Brain exploding resources.
- What are we going to make?
- Homework!
First, are you all on the CCI Slack? If so, let's move on to confirming your attendance in this class! This will be your responsibility to do in every class that you attend. If you miss classes, you will be contacted by the CCI admin team. This is important not just for your learning, but most importantly for your welfare.
- Download the Seats Mobile app from the iOS app store.
- Login with your UAL ID.
- Say yes to all the permission requests - notifications, Bluetooth (make sure it's turned on) and location.
- Then you should be able to simply check in.
- If you get stuck, message me on Slack for Student Guide or a video guide.
Next, let's go around the room and introduce ourselves, with how you like to be addressed, how you are feeling today and which BA you are on at UAL.
Let's take a look at the Diploma homepage, GitHub readme.md and finally the GitHub wiki. Please send me your GitHub ID's on Slack and I'll add you to the GitHub, so that you can edit your own introduction. Don't forget to find your Wu-Tang name! I'll demonstrate how to do that now.
How to make use of the Disability services at CCI. You'll have already seen this on the GitHub readme.md Don't wait until to your Masters to get support like I did. Support is available - make use of it, you'll be glad you did. Our main contact for the Apple Diploma is Becky Keen: b.keen@arts.ac.uk.
How to make use of the Library services at CCI. You'll have already seen this on the GitHub readme.md - but I just wanted to say that Benelia is amazing! Make use of the library - you'll be glad you did. She's provided an introduction presentation, let's go through it now.
How you can get support around the cost of living crisis - the following article was recently posted by UAL management. If you are finding it tough, financially, physically, mentally or psychically, please don't hesitate to get in contact with me directly or the UAL student advice service. They are great. The sooner you ask, the more support we can give. Don't suffer in silence. London can be a lonely place. The hardship fund is something I'd recommend applying to if you even think you might need extra support.
Are any of you interested in becoming the course rep? We must recruit two as by 11th October 2023! Who's interested? Slack me if you are - great for your CV. No voting, just volunteering.
As a break, a presentation I gave recently on 10 thoughts for the future.
My expectations of you through this year:
- I expect you to be in person at CCI on the days that you have lectures - Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.
- Make use of the other resources here at CCI. The technicians, the researchers the other lecturers.
- I expect you to be checking the CCI Slack at least once every day (apart from weekends). Download the iOS Slack app. Right now if you haven't already.
- In terms of what you are going to make - by the end of this year I expect you to have created a pair of apps on the app store - one in a team, the other on your own. This will be real apps! I'm excited and I hope you are too.
Tutorials - every Monday morning. Tutorials are every Monday morning from 1030-1300 on the CCI Slack. They are 20 minutes long and can be about anything you like - the course, how you are, challenges you are having, ambitions, career advice, music selections. Whatever you like. I've got over 20 years of experience doing interesting things with computers, so make use of that! Let's look at the schedule for next Monday and the one after.
Important methods for succeeding on this course (and in general)
Some things to keep in mind:
- ๐ Dory
- ๐น Henrick Kniberg on making skateboards
- โ Cassie Robinson's thoughts
- ๐ Chuck Wendig on being a magic skeleton
- ๐ David Bowie on being out of your depth
- ๐ธ Yohji Yamamoto on copying
- ๐ On going slow
- ๐ Susan Wendell on hearing disabled people
- ๐ฆ A rubber duck and ๐ชฑ๐ being a worm inside Apple
What does Dory do? This is the most important thing in creative coding (and life).
Henrick Kniberg on how to make a car. In other words, if you want to make a car, make a skateboard, then a scooter, then a bicycle, then a motorbike and THEN a car. I want you to make lots of skateboards.
Cassie Robinson's thoughts on what to think about when you make something.
Chuck Wendig on what to remember.
Just a little out of your depth is the right place to be.
Yohji Yamamoto is right. Copy what you love!
Just try. As soon as you try you are way ahead of most other people.
Susan Wendell wrote powerfully about disability and feminism. What explosion of knowledge could you make with your life?
Rubber duck debugging is a very powerful technique.
To help you in this, I've brought you your very own worm (just as good as a duck to speak to (-;) in an Apple. I want you to be like this! I want you to burrow into the Apple ecosystem and make new, beautiful, caring and playful apps that you want and you want to make for other groups that are important to you. Who might those be?
My Background
๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ท๓ ฌ๓ ณ๓ ฟ Wales and being bored.
โจ Imperial and Star Wars.
โฐ Royal College of Art and being earlylate.
๐ฎ๐น Fabrica and not starving.
๐ UnitedVisualArtists and feedback loops.
๐ Hellicar&Lewis and open source.
๐ง๐ปโโ๏ธ Teaching and psychic load and meditation.
๐ฏโโ๏ธ Universal Everything and people not projects.
What is the Creative Computing Institute (CCI)?
What you are we going to learn in this next year?
We are going to learn about Creative Computing - a blend of Computational Thinking and Creative Coding.
What is Computational Thinking?
- To learn how see problems at many levels (abstraction), break down problems (decomposition), find the order in them (pattern recognition), make solutions using a series of steps (algorithms) and realise that you might be able to use that solution in lots of areas (generalisation).
- Most of all, to learn how to be autodidacts.
- First task: what is an autodidact?
Look it up! What did you find?
What is Creative Coding?
I believe all coding is creative, as all life is creative. Specifically, creative coding is about blending creative techniques with software engineering. I want you to learn how to write code but also how you could use computing to change your practice. You can make lots of earth credits writing software, but I'm much more interested in giving you the tools to change yourself, your practice and the world.
Next, a really important diagram.
Jim Campbell's formula for Computer Art. Realise that you can use things without understanding every aspect of them. All that computers do is process inputs into outputs. That's it.
But what are we going to learn?
We are going to learn Swift, which is one of the most top paying programming languages in the world as well as audience of over 1.5 billion devices. But it isn't about the money, it's about the impact. I want you to realise that your apps have just as much of a right to be on the home
screen as anyone else's. Also, I have a feeling that the Apple Glasses are coming. You are all going to be in a superb position to make the first great apps for that device when it arrives.
Other coding resources:
- The Stanford CS193p course on Developing Apps for iOS is a great course exclusively in SwiftUI, the latest way of making apps for iOS - we'll be learning more of this later in the block, but you might want to get a head start!
- Awesome Creative Coding - a "carefully curated list of awesome creative coding resources primarily for beginners/intermediates" - tons of brilliant creative coding resources here.
- CS50, Harvard University's introduction to the intellectual enterprises of computer science and the art of programming - not strictly creative coding, but a good introduction to programming and computer science.
- Super old school (1986) introduction to Computer Science from Hal Abelson at MIT - lots of wisdom here, but not a good source for how to learn Swift!
- Computerphile is a YouTube channel with "videos all about computers and computer stuff". It's also the sister channel of the brilliant Numberphile.
Some situating yourself in the world resources:
We are in a stressful time at the moment. Here are some resources for situating yourself in the world, and how to keep going, set up a studio (if you want) and what you (maybe) should be doing:
- Win Without Pitching - how to run a design studio in a sustainable way.
- You're my Favourite Client - how to be a great client. I give this book to all my clients.
- Hell Yeah - how to decide to do a project or not.
- Austin Kleon on how to keep going.
- Tim Pychyl on procrastination and the importance of being conscientious.
- Ira Glass on the gap between your taste and the quality of your work - you must watch this one!
- Bret Victorโs Lecture at Closing keynote at the UIST and SPLASH conferences, October 2014 on "The Humane Representation of Thought" - inspirational stuff from Bret Victor - who also wrote a great essay on what a technologist can do about climate change.
- Alan Kay - "Normal Considered Harmful" - one of the creators of modern computing on how to make change in the world.
- Anab Jain of Superflux 's essay on Calling for a More-Than-Human Politics.
Some brain exploding resources:
- Digital morphogenesis is the exploration of how shapes, forms, and patterns emerge in nature through the use of computational modelling and generative systems based on biological, chemical, and physical processes. It draws upon research from practically every area of the natural sciences and has applications in architecture, digital fabrication, art, engineering, biomedicine, and more.
- Wait but Why - lots of great essays on interesting things - I started with this one - Your Life in Weeks.
- Better Explained - the best site for getting explanations of Maths ideas graphically - I started with this article - Surprising Uses of the Pythagorean Theorem.
- Joscha Bach's lectures are always brilliant - lots of amazing thinking about love, the universe and what it means to be concious.
- Stanford professor Robert Sapolsky's opening lecture of the course entitled Human Behavioural Biology on how he aims to avoid categorical thinking.
- Jane Elliott's anti racist teaching.
What are we going to make?
You are going to make two apps, a caring app in a group in Product One and a playful app on your own in Product Two (with help from me all along the way). You are also going to make your own ML model in ML Two. BTW, the idea of the playful and caring approach comes from this amazing presentation from David Graeber. More about him in a moment.
For inspiration for the things you can make on Apple platforms, let's take a look at the Apple Design Awards 2023 winners and finalists. Lots of behind the scenes articles at the bottom of that page too.
My aim is to have our final show in the Apple Headquarters in Battersea! I'm working on that as I speak. Would you like to see what students presented there last year?
Homework:
- Install Xcode on your computers.
- Install Apple Books on your computers and iPhones and get all the textbooks.
- Sign up to GitHub and message me your ID's on Slack.
- Once I've acknowledged that, you'll be able to complete filling out your part of the wiki introductions page - so send me your GitHub IDs as soon as possible.
- Sign up to the Apple Authorised Training Centre evaluation system with your UAL emails.
- Send me your Apple ID's so I can add you to our iOS development team at CCI.
- Read and watch all of The Steve Jobs archive
- Watch the David Graeber play and care video before Product One on Friday!
- A reminder: your next lecture is on Thursday morning at 0930 in room PR_B501-03 with Xiowan-Yi on Machine Learning. Be nice!
- See you this Friday, right here, at 0930.
Thanks!
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