Big Nerd Ranch

• Almost everything is included in the package — hotel, food, ground transportation, and the class itself. A shuttle even picked us up from the airport and took us to our hotel.
• The fact that you're in one location for a whole week with nothing to do but learn is the best part about this.
• The class is pretty intense. It's split between lectures and then working through a tutorial chapter in the book covering the same material. It seems like there was always *almost* enough time to finished the chapter material before we went to the next lecture, but never quite enough, and I don't think I'm slow. In the end, though, it was effective.
• Encouraged breaks for lunch, dinner, and afternoon nature walks. It really helps to give your brain time to breathe for a few minutes and let the previous lesson sink in. The nature trails around the conference hotel were quite nice, when it wasn't raining.
• The teacher and the TA (a teacher in training) made themselves available for "study hall" time after dinner, when you could go and ask more questions, or just finish up the challenges you weren't able to finish in class.

• With as much reliance on the book as the class had, I feel like I could have gone through the book myself, consulting some more experienced developer friends if I got stuck. Would I have learned it so fast, or would it have sunk in as well as when I was able to concentrate on it for a whole week? Probably not, but it's an obvious alternative if you need to save money.
• You're asked in the pre-class survey if you have any food allergies, which I do: a moderate dairy allergy and a severe peanut allergy. However, nothing seemed to be done with this information. Meals and snacks at the hotel contained these ingredients and there was no labeling. If you asked the staff what items didn't have dairy, they didn't know, and would have to go ask the chef. Thankfully the peanuts were confined to a couple of easily-spotted snack mixes, but dairy was all over the menu, and it was hard to eat healthily.
• Surprise hotel fee: This is the "almost" — you have to let the hotel charge your card a deposit for "incidentals," even if you don't use them. I would have loved an option to forego any incidentals at all, but I suppose that is probably outside of BNR's control.

The complete immersion into the subject matter is fantastic. I attended the iOS Dev and by the end of the course, I was not only skilled but confident in those skills. I am now a fulltime iOS dev.

I have recommended BNR to colleagues that have gone and loved it as well. I will be going back shortly to add Kotlin to my bag of tricks.

The format is well thought out and the material builds on itself nicly. 

The biggest thing I got from the bootcamp is that I actually got rid of my impostor syndrome. Being there, following along every lesson, learning a ton, I left with a confidence that I did not have before. 

At the end of the week, I was able to manually draw a graph in Swift, based on dynamic data and to integrate it in a Objective-C code base.

Every detail of the bootcamp is well thought out. The overall experience is absolutely fantastic. 

I attended the iOS Essentials with Swift bootcamp in Monterey. The Asilomar Conference center is beautiful and very comfortable. I was new to iOS programmng and so, for me, the pace was very fast. The course proved to be an excellent foundation for me to build upon. I am looking forward to attending an Advance course when I feel like I have progressed enough to benefit from it. I had wanted to attend a Big Nerd Ranch bootcamp for quite some and was not disappointed at all. 

Big Nerd Ranch knows how to put on a bootcamp!

The curriculum was thorough and easy to follow. The instructors were engaging and very knowledgeable. If they didn't know an answer off the top of their heads they would help me find the answer.

The location, Stone Mountain Resort, was breath taking and extremely comfortable. All of my needs were taken care of and provided the perfect environment to focus on learning.

I cannot recommend this bootcamp enough to anyone who is looking to jump into the Swift and iOS world. I was able to take the skills I learned from this bootcamp to launch my first iOS app!

The Big Nerd Ranch changed my life. I was working as a lawyer and writing software on the side. I wanted to transition to writing software full-time, but I didn't have the confidence to make the switch. I heard about the Big Nerd Ranch from a friend and I decided to attend a seven-day bootcamp in Atlanta. I took a week off of work and drove to Atlanta for the class. I was very nervous because I wasn't a professional software developer and I didn't have a computer science degree. The first morning, my instructor made me feel at ease. As we worked through the materials and the examples, I noticed that I knew as much or more than my peers. I took advantage of the lunch and dinner time to speak with my instructors and peers and my confidence  continued to grow. By the end of the week, I knew that I wanted to write software as a full-time job and I had the confidence to do it. I got home and, with my Big Nerd Ranch certification in hand, I applied to several software development jobs. After several offers, I closed up my law firm and started my new career as a software developer. I still work as a software developer. I even write software for some of my lawyer friends. All thanks to The Big Nerd Ranch.

Being able to take a week away from the hustle and bustle of your daily workflow to focus on learning a new skill is an amazing resource. That is exactly how Big Nerd Ranch is set up and let me tell you, it works.

I chose to attend the Android Essentials Boot Camp after having attended an Advanced iOS Boot Camp in the past. I chose Monterey because the location is on a campground with cabins (many of which include fireplaces), great food at the three scheduled meals per day (as well as a shop that sells food and drinks including beer & wine during off meal times), and amazing beach views. Location, location, location.

As far as content is concerned, the instructors are incredibly knowledgeable  and are there for you during all of the hands on sessions. Our instructor also hung out with us in the evening when we gathered around a fireplace and worked on the material we had learned during the day. It's a great learning environment and it is staffed with the right people for the job. You'll also meet people that you'll talk to in the months after your course and maybe forever.

If there is one complaint I could make it would be that the pacing can be inconsistent at times. The instructors do a great job of managing and adjusting for this though so it's not a major complaint.

I highly recommend checking out a Big Nerd Ranch Boot Camp if you get the opportunity.

This course was an excellent, though high intensity, introduction to iOS programming with Objective-C.  Clearly this is an older course, and I have since gone on with the books to Swift, but Joe Conway did an excellent job with this hands on course, keeping everybody together on the same page and steadily progressing.  I have been a developer/programmer for a long time, and I was glad that I completed the preparatory steps that were listed in the registration material.  I'm not much for the wilderness, so the location was a bit odd, but on the other hand, having nothing to do but study and code did increase the tendency to, well, study and code!  This was a very early iteration of this course, so Joe was literally rewriting parts of it as we went.  Overall, an excellent experience.

Unlike some (many?) school-based courses what you'll get with Big Nerd Ranch is instruction informed and taught by people that also develop real-world apps, both independently and for larger companies as clients.  In my class there were both people brand new to iPhone/mobile development, some very fresh to programming in general, and others with many years of software development experience, and the instructors went out of their way to ensure students at every level got what they needed.  I enjoyed their in-person boot camp a bit more than their programming books (at least the most recent Swift book from BNR).

This training really helped me to cover the basics of iOS development. Before starting, I already had quite a couple years of software development experience, which made things a bit more manageable for me, but still... It was very intensive, started right after breakfast and often continued till well after dinner. I'm not sure I've ever been so tired in my entire life, but it was totally worth it. The teachers were great, I could never have accomplished this in the same amount of time on my own, even though the Big Nerd Ranch guides are also very good. I took this training pre-Swift, and ARC was just introduced, so it's a while ago, but they made sure that the newest technologies were covered in the training. Teachers used good real life examples, they were very aproachable, and helpful. It's a good mix between classical instruction and doing excercises. Never regretted taking this course!

I attended the iOS 7 day class with Objective-C.

I have been to literally dozens of training classes over the years and 90% of the bore me.

This was the best training class I have been to by far for the following reasons.

1. Immersion - If you can find the time, please try to. Being dedicated helps focus and results. There are a lot of online courses available and they are really good. This experience is world-class. 
2. Instructors - My instructor was world-class. I was looking for industry expert which is what I got 
3. Teaches you how to learn - Many classes and online sites tell you how to do things. BNR does some of that but more importantly they teach you how to use the Apple docs properly and find the correct answers yourself instead of relying on search engines 
4. Classmates - You will find that all your classmates are very motivated because they also are dedicating the time. I love learning from others and since you eat and train together all day you get to learn a lot from many different angles.

(Please note my class was iOS with Objective-C but that was not an option in the drop-down list)

Without a doubt, I highly recommend BNR's iOS Essentials with Swift course.  As an experienced developer that was looking for a springboard into iOS / Swift, this course was great.  During the course of the program, we were exposed to important topics on iOS and Swift and were encouraged to think outside of the box and ask questions beyond the course material.  At the end of the course, I had not only a large portfolio of working code examples, but also experience and knowledge beyond what could be found in just the book.

Location and ammenities were great as well.

Helpful hints: 1) Make sure to be fully focused on the training while there.  Do your best to avoid work emails, etc, unless required.  2) Have a project or idea to play around with during office hours in the evening.  This is a great way to expand on the knowledge you have learned on a daily basis and will allow you to ask questions beyond what is covered in class, and the instructors will be helpful in answering your questions.

I've attended the Android course as well, and it was great.  Really looking forward to the Kotlin course in May!

I really enjoyed the pacing and difficulty level of the course.  It was billed as an advanced course and it really delivered. But if you had the prerequisite knowledge and experience it was not too challenging. I've been to many similar courses and/or conferences where the content didn't really match what was promised.  The projects were really well chosen and allowed to me cover skills and technology I was aware of but had never found time to learn. I think we've all been to the -- 5 hours of content crammed into 20 hours of delivery type experience.  This is not that!  Great instruction. Great materials.  I just can't say enough about BNR.  Have been buying their books for longer than I can remember -- and I buy pretty much every one of their iOS dev books regardless -- but it was so much better to 'meet the man' as it were.

Course was amazing, instructors were amazing, the location (Stone Mountain GA) was amazing!  I can't praise this group (Big Nerd Ranch) or the location enough.  The instructors presented the material in a very easy to consume manner, we're extremely knowledgable and made themselves available long into the wee hours of the night for labs, questions, discussions and anything else we could throw at them.  The location was outstanding with excellent accomodations, snacks, drinks, in general there was enough food to feed a small country and it was provided throughout the day.  We were writing apps by day 3 and covered enought of the iOS and Swift framework to build apps with the most commonly used features in apps today.  We've sent other developers to this same course and will continue to send developers to BigNerdRanch courses.

I would highly recommend this course (or any course taught by BigNerdRanch) to others!

My background - I had about 7 years of Software Development experience out of which 3 years I had been working on developing iOS Apps with Objective-C. I took a break for about couple of years from iOS development and software altogether and wanted to get updated with Swift and iOS 9. Big Nerd Ranch (BNR) Guides have been the gold standard to anything apple and I thought I would be able to come to pace by doing an intensive week long bootcamp. I would not say I achieved 100% of what I had planned for.

The course starts on a weekend (Saturday). You arrive to the facility on Previous Night (Friday) and have dinner with the instructor (Mine was Scott Ritchie) and other attendees. I was a Asilomar Conference Grounds CA and it was a great campus. Scotts a great guy to hang out with. He has worked with Apple in its glory days (pre-iPhone) and loves to share stories about his encounter with Steve Jobs. He has good knowledge of how Apple Development team and hence the software written have evolved and how it affects the current development ecosystem. Also he is well networked with todays app developers so can definitely share pragmatic tips about app development. He was very attentive towards all student queries and also was kind enough to chat about anything related to iOS development and even stuff outside of it. He knows the area in and out and makes sure everybody is comfortable even after hours. He drove me to supermarket as I did not have a car and need urgent shaving supplies which I had forgotten to pack and made margaritas for us for one of the camp fire labs.

Let me get to the point about the course.

Pros
- Very comfortable stay (I would say over comfortable. I would not mind to pay less and settle for a little less lavish and more functional stay during 7 days).
- Instructor was a great guy to hang out with.
- People are mostly friendly and helpful and the batch is small so Instructor does get a chance to work with everyone.
- After course, camp fires, wine nights, labs with camp fire and margaritas (shh) and beach walks between the course were fun.
- You could meet a lot of interesting people working in valley. We had people from Netflix and couple of them from Apple (though they were in stealth mode), Intuit, Black Pixel, 3M. Great bunch to network and hang around with.

Cons
- Pace - I found the program to be a little fast even with iOS programming background I had. I highly recommend to go through the entire book (BNR's iOS and Swift Guide) so you have enough time during the bootcamp to go into further details. You will learn the most if you do all the labs and ask questions when you are stuck or a concept you are not understanding. 
- Screen - BNR should provide a bigger and better screen. There was constant adjustment/focus/scrolling going on and I though it affected the flow of the instructor.
- Meals provided by the facility will get to you in 3-4 days. So plan to explore the surrounding areas.
- Connectivity is very bad. Could be a pro as it keeps you focussed on the course and gives you enough rest but the rooms and facilities are ok for the price.
- Biggest point I thought that they can work on is include more practical areas that are used in today's apps. I was surprised to see things like Push Notifications and use of Networking Libraries skipped. I would say these things are essentials rather than advanced topics. 

Objective-C/Cocoa Bootcamp is an intensive seven-day training course specifically designed to provide a condensed and information-rich, hands-on introduction to Objective-C programming utilizing the Xcode development environment on the Macintosh platform. I enjoyed this experience very much and recommend it as one of the best ways to level up on MacOS application development. It truly is a "Boot Camp" experience. The Big Nerd folks provide great food, and posess deep insight into how to get all the right information crammed into you in only 7 days!

This 5-day class explores advanced iOS development topics and will teach you how to maximize the performance of your new and existing iOS applications. Prepare your brain for an influx of Swift and iOS programming knowledge.

What you'll learn

• Various tools for document-based and multithreaded architecture
• Create iOS extensions
• Record video, process barcodes and synthesize speech using AVFoundation
• Create custom animations for transitions between view controllers
• Take advantage of unit testing
• Create your own UIs with custom Layers and Core Graphics

Big nerd ranch is not cheap, but if you're serious about starting with a new technology, this is the place to go (short of spending hours learning online, which is also valid). The whole experience is worth the money, to a certain degree. You will learn whatever technology you're attending to learn, but be well rested and try to have a decent "base" before you go, their trainings are short (1 week max) and so they need to cramp a lot of information in those days. You don't want to waste 5000 dollars or more because "you're tired". 

I took this course in Monterey with Scott Ritchie. Scott is an amazing instructor. As a new developer he made the course easy to follow and used lots of real examples. I also really enjoyed the walks he took us on during breaks, it gave us a chance to enjoy some of the lesser explored areas on the beach. The conference center is in such a unique location that it makes the entire experience very enjoyable, to the point that you forget you are spending 10+ hours in the class room a day.

I took a course on Cocoa several years ago in Germany, and it was a great experience.  Aaron is an excellent teacher, the materials are very well put together, and the peers in the course were very fun to talk with and plan projects with.

This course also eventually led me to start my own small business, largely focused on iOS development.  This was hugely successful and the course paid for more than itself several times over.

As a software tester making the jump to developer, I already knew a lot about certain aspects of iOS development, like provisioning and Human Interface Guidelines. But learning APIs by reading Apple's class references wasn't teaching me how to be a good developer. 

Mikey's course offered a good mix of technical info and stylistic advice. He fielded both basic and advanced questions with deep knowledge and respect. 

The retreat setting made it easy for me to focus on practicing the material without distractions of a usual work week. 

When I took the course, it was a bit of an awkward mix of Swift and Objective-C, but realistically, so are most real world iOS development projects right now. 

The BNR boot camps are worth every penny and then some. The lectures expand so much on what is in the book and the conversations that arise during the course are perhaps even more valuable than the lectures and lab time. I learned so much more than what was in the syllabus. I was able to have an app I wrote while in the class code reviewed by the instructor and that alone was worth the price of admission. I learned about how to think about coding an iOS app and not just the syntax of a language or the nuances of an API. Being able to continue to ask questions and have conversations with both the instructors and classmates in the forum after the class has ended has helped immeasurably. I would go to any boot camp BNR offers because the instructors are incredible and the courses are amazing.