Foreword: About the Author
“Rory and I met in L.A. in 1983. He reminds me of one of my favorite film characters, Buckaroo Banzai—always going in six directions at once. If you stop him and ask what he's doing, he'll answer comprehensively and with amazing detail. Disciplined, colorful, and friendly, he has the uncanny ability to explain the highly abstract in simple, organic terms. He always accomplishes what he sets out to do, and he'll help you do the same.”
Why you'll relate to Dr. Lewis
While attending Syracuse University as a computer-engineering student, Rory scrambled to pass his classes and make enough money to support his wife and two young daughters. In 1990, he landed a choice on-campus job as a proctor in the computer labs in the LC Smith College of Engineering. Even though he was struggling with subjects in the Electrical Engineering program, he was always there at the Help Desk. It was a daunting experience for Rory because his job was only to help his fellow students with computer lab equipment questions, but he invariably found his classmates asking deeper andharder questions: “Dude, did you understand the calculus assignment? Can you help me?!”
These students assumed that, because Rory was the proctor, he knew the answers. Afraid and full of self-doubt, he sought a way to help them without revealing his inadequacies. Rory learned to start with: “Let's go back to the basics. Remember that last week the professor presented us with an equation…?” By going back to the fundamentals, restating and rebranding them, Rory began to develop a technique that would, more often than not, lead to working solutions. By the time his senior year rolled around, there was often a line of students waiting at the Help Desk on the nights Rory worked.
Fast-Forward 17 Years
Picture a long-haired, wacky professor walking through the campus of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, dressed in a stunning contrast of old-schooland drop-out. As he walks into the Engineering Building, he is greeted by students and faculty who smile and say hearty hellos, all the while probably shaking their heads at his tweed jacket, Grateful Dead t-shirt, khaki pants, and flip flops. As he walks down the hall of the Computer Science Department, there's a line of students standing outside his office. Reminiscent of the line of students that waited for him at the Help Desk in those early years as a proctor in the computer lab, they turn and greet him, “Good morning, Dr. Lewis!” Many of these students at UC-Colorado Springs are not even in his class, but they know that Dr. Lewis will see them and help them anyway.
Past—Present—Future
Dr. Lewis holds three academic degrees. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from Syracuse University. Syracuse's LC Smith College of Engineering is one of the country's top schools. It is there that Intel, AMD, and Microsoft send their top employees to study for their PhDs.
Upon completing his BS (with emphasis on the mathematics of electronic circuitry in microprocessors), he went across the quad to the Syracuse University School of Law. During his first summer at law school, Fulbright & Jaworski, the nation's most prolific law firm, recruited Rory to work in its Austin office, where some of the attorneys specialize in high-tech intellectual-property patent litigation. As part of his clerking experience, Lewis worked on the infamous AMD v. Intel case; he helped assess the algorithms of the mathematics of microprocessor electrical circuitry for the senior partners.
During his second summer in law school, Skjerven, Morrill, MacPherson, Franklin, & Friel—the other firm sharing the work on the AMD v. Intel case—recruited Rory to work with them at their Silicon Valley branches (San Jose and San Francisco). After immersing himself in law for several years and receiving his JD at Syracuse, Lewis realized his passion was for the mathematics of computers, not the legal ramifications of hardware and software. He preferred a learning and creative environment rather than the fighting and arguing intrinsic in law.
After three years away from academia, Rory Lewis moved south to pursue his PhD in Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. There, he studied under Dr. Zbigniew W. Ras, known worldwide for his innovations in data mining algorithms and methods, distributed data mining, ontologies, and multimedia databases. While studying for his PhD, Lewis taught computer science courses to computer engineering undergraduates, as well as e-commerce and programming courses to MBA students.
Upon receiving his PhD in Computer Science, Rory accepted a tenure-track position in Computer Science at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, where his research is in the computational mathematics of neurosciences. Most recently, he co-wrote a grant proposal on the mathematical analysis of the genesis of epilepsy with respect to the hypothalamus. However, with the advent of Apple's revolutionary iPhone and its uniquely flexible platform—and market—for mini-applications, games, and personal computing tools, he grew excited and began experimenting and programming for his own pleasure. Once his own fluency was established, Lewis figured he could teach a class on iPhone apps that would include non-engineers. With his insider knowledge as an iPhone beta tester, he began to integrate the parameters of the proposed iPad platform into his lesson plans—even before the official release in April 2010.
The class was a resounding success and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive, from students and colleagues alike. When approached about the prospect of converting his course into a book to be published by Apress, Dr. Lewis jumped at the opportunity. He happily accepted an offer to convert his course outlines, class notes, and videos into the book you are now holding in your hands.
Why Write This Book?
The reasons Dr. Lewis wrote this book are the same reasons he originally decided to create a class for both engineering and non-engineering majors: the challenge and the fun! According to Lewis, the iPhone and iPad are “…some of the coolest, most powerful, and most technologically advanced tools ever made—period!”
He is fascinated by the fact that, just under the appealing touch screen of high-resolution images and fun little icons, the iPhone and iPad are programmed in Objective-C, an incredibly difficult and advanced language. More and more, Lewis was approached by students and colleagues who wanted to program apps for the iPhone and would ask his opinion on their ideas. It seemed that, with every new update of the iPhone, not to mention the advent of the expanded interface of the iPad, the floodgates of interest in programming apps were thrown wider and wider. Wonderful and innovative ideas just needed the proper channel to flow into the appropriate format and then out to the world.
Generally speaking, however, the people who write books about Objective-C write for people who know Java, C#, or C++ at an advanced level. So, because there seemed to be no help for the average person who, nevertheless, has a great idea for an iPhone/iPad app, Dr. Lewis decided to launch such a class. He realized it would be wise to use his own notes for the first half of the course, and then to explore the best existing resources he could find.
As he forged ahead with this plan, Lewis was most impressed with Beginning iPhone 3 Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK. This best-selling instructional book from Apress was written by Dave Mark and Jeff Lamarche. Lewis concluded that their book would provide an excellent, high-level target for his lessons…a “stepping stones” approachto comprehensive and fluent programming for all Apple's multi-touch devices.
After Dr. Lewis's course had been successfully presented, and during a subsequent conversation with a representative from Apress, Lewis happened to mention that he'd only started using that book about half-way through the semester, as he had to bring his non-engineering students up to speed first. The editor suggested converting his notes and outlines into a primer—an introductory book tuned to the less-technical programming crowd. At that point, it was only a matter of time and details—like organizing and revising Dr. Lewis's popular instructional videos to make them available to other non-engineers excited to program their own iPhone and/or iPad apps.
So, that's the story of how a wacky professor came to write this book. We hope you are inspired to take this home and begin. Arm yourself with this knowledge and begin now tochange your life!
Ben Easton
Author, Teacher, Editor