Today’s task is to dive in and understand the debugging tools that are built into Xcode.  The good news is that my development it to the point where I need to start debugging things.  The bad news is that the debugging tools aren’t working quite as I expected.  I’m going to be spending quality time this afternoon/ evening with the Xcode Debugging Guide in the iPhone Reference Library.

I’ll update this post with some lessons learned about debugging apps for iPhone.  Hopefully soon!

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Updated

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It was really pretty simple.  Once I figured out how to view the console (there are lots of ways to see the console but what I did was go to Xcode Preferences -> Debugging -> In the “On Start” select box choose Show Console) the I got all of the info I needed.  I also played around enough with the debugger to figure out how to set break points, examine variable values and step through the code.

I’ve mostly been writing about the business process and decisions I’ve made that have gotten me to this point.  I haven’t written much about the technology learning curve but I think it would be good to start touching on this part of the process.

Here are some initial thoughts on my experience of diving into the iPhone SDK over the last few weeks:

• It’s humbling to step back and start from scratch with a new platform.  All of the tutorials and videos have to assume some level of familiarity with Apple development tools and technologies.  Prior to a couple of weeks ago I didn’t have any familiarity at all.  This has meant I’ve been doing a lot of reading and re-reading, watching and re-watching.  Slow and painful at times.
• My Java OO programming days are turning out to be a huge help.  I did a fair amount of Java OO dev 9-5 years ago.  That experience has been invaluable as I’ve been diving into the details of Objective-C.
• I’m having a blast.  I haven’t had this much fun with technology in a long time.
• Progress has been in baby steps.  But what seemed like black magic last week is starting to make sense.  Little things make a HUGE difference at these early stages.
• I’m finding my way around the dev tools and figuring out how to find basic info in the iPhone Reference Library.  Seems silly to say this but even knowing where to go to look up reference info about a class or concept is something I’ve had to learn.
• Each day something new falls into place.  See baby steps above.  The challenge I’m having is that I need to keep at this and not get too high on success or too low on a feeling of being stuck.  I burned myself out the first week and I’m trying to stay more balanced going forward.
• The most valuable resource I found so far is a video from the 2008 WWDC called “Fundamentals of Cocoa”.  This video helped to put a lot of what I had read and seen in other places into context.  I would strongly recommend that you watch this session AFTER you have struggled with some of the other tutorials and work through the examples that are provided.  Although, it’s focused on Mac desktop app development it fits right in with iPhone dev as well.

That is all I can think of for now.  More to come…