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About Big Nerd Ranch

Location: Atlanta

Big Nerd Ranch is in the business of building brilliant digital products and training others to do the same.

BNR has an incredible team of engineers and designers that build incredible iOS, Android and Web applications. These same developers and designers... Read More

Since 2001, Big Nerd Ranch has been partnering with companies — from startups to Fortune 100s — to build brilliance through innovative digital product development and training. Big Nerd Ranch helps technology leaders and digital product owners take their products from “visionary” to “market advantage.”

Courses

Accelerated iOS with Swift

Cost: $4,200
Duration: 1 week
Locations: Atlanta
In-person Only
Course Description:

If you’ve already mastered procedural and object-oriented programming and need a fast-paced introduction to iOS development, this course is for you. With this five-day bootcamp, you’ll be building elegant and efficient iOS apps in no time.

What You'll Learn:
- Setting up text input fields on the iPhone and move the virtual keyboard onto the screen
- Pulling data from a web service for use in an application and storing that data on the device
- How to handle touch and complex multi-touch sequences
- Properly configure your user interface to handle multiple device orientations and device rotation
- Using Auto Layout to create user interfaces that work on any device -
Using Core Data for data persistence

View our website for a full course syllabus.

Subjects:
Swift, iOS

Advanced Android

Cost: $4,200
Duration: 1 week
Locations: Atlanta
In-person Only
Course Description:

Go beyond the fundamentals in our five-day Advanced Android course for experienced Android developers. You’ll learn how to prep your app for app store submission and the techniques that make your code stand out from the crowd. We’ll also teach you how to maintain your app and improve its performance.

What You'll Learn:
- Authentication with OAuth
- Handling network errors
- How to choose the right threading options
- Testing with mock responses and recorded server responses
- Simplifying your code by leveraging 3rd-party libraries
- Implementing fully custom views
- Creating custom notifications
- Signing apps, Google play release process, alpha and beta releases

View our website for a full course syllabus.

Subjects:
Android

Advanced iOS

Cost: $4,200
Duration: 1 week
Locations: Atlanta
In-person Only
Course Description:

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

View our website for a full course syllabus.

Subjects:
Objective-C, Swift, iOS

Android Essentials

Cost: $4,200
Duration: 1 week
Locations: Atlanta
In-person Only
Course Description:

Four out of every five smartphones use the Android operating system. Learn to build for this ever-present platform with our five-day introduction to Android programming.

What You'll Learn:
- Build sophisticated applications using multiple activities and fragments
- Integrate with web services using REST APIs and threading
- Effectively handle configuration changes and low memory states
- Communicate between and within Android applications
- Make your user interface shine with styles and themes
- Animate views using property animations

View our website for a full course syllabus.

Subjects:
Android

Front-End Essentials

Cost: $4,200
Duration: 1 week
Locations: Atlanta
In-person Only
Course Description:

If your website or web app doesn’t work on smartphones, then it simply doesn’t work. More people are using mobile devices than ever before, requiring a new approach to design and development. This 5-day course teaches you how to implement responsive, mobile-friendly layouts for your website and provides a solid foundation in programming for the browser. From the first day of class, you’ll build websites and apps that work in different browsers and on different screens, learning skills that will last beyond the next wave of devices and will survive new OS releases. Enterprise teams will find this course especially useful for building apps used in a bring-your-own-device environment.

What You'll Learn:
- Building responsive, mobile-friendly websites
- Using Bootstrap for rapid styling and how to write the code that powers your application
- Improving your site’s performance and efficiency
- Leveraging real-time data for collaborating across web and native apps
- Writing effective JavaScript, CSS, and HTML5
- Utilizing Ember.js, jQuery, and Node.js

View our website for a full course syllabus.

Subjects:
CSS, HTML, Node.js, JavaScript

iOS Essentials with Swift

Cost: $5,200
Duration: 1 week
Locations: Atlanta
In-person Only
Course Description:

If you're new to iOS development and want to write applications that run on the iPhone or iPad, this course is just what you need. In just seven days, we’ll have you building your first iOS application using Swift.

What You'll Learn:
- The toolchains and the classes that make up the iOS UI framework
- Using Core Data for data persistence
- Understand application architecture and how to pass data around in your application
- Syntax, best practices and hands-on examples for functions and closures
- How Swift's native Error Handling mechanism helps you write elegant and safe code

View our website for a full course syllabus.

Subjects:
Swift, iOS

Big Nerd Ranch Reviews

Average Ratings (All Programs)

Big Nerd Ranch logo

4.9/5 (21 reviews)

Mark Boszko
Graduated: 2020

3/9/2020

Course
iOS Essentials with Swift

Overall

Curriculum

Job Support

"Intense, dedicated learning experience with little interruption"

Pros:

- 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... Read More

Cons:

- 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.
- 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.

Mike Anelli
Developer | Graduated: 2010

5/19/2018

Course
iOS Essentials with Swift

Overall

Curriculum

Job Support

"Worth every penny"

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... Read More

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

Geoff White
Graduated: 2010

5/1/2018

Course
iOS Essentials with Swift

Overall

Curriculum

Job Support

"Top notch instruction in a great environment"

Just like Big Nerd Ranch's books, their bootcamp courses are top notch. This was my first development bootcamp and I can say without a doubt it was the perfect introduction to both iOS programming and bootcamps in general. The instructors were very versatile,... Read More

Bruce Carter
Senior Systems Engineer | Graduated: 2011

4/26/2018

Course
iOS Essentials with Swift

Overall

Curriculum

Job Support

"Most effective training event ever"

I took this 7 day bootcamp when it was iOS Essentials with Objective-C at the Historic Banning Mills location as did a couple of the other reviewers. The course was excellent. The instructor was awesome. The food was great. The accommodations were cool.... Read More

I didn't really believe it when the instructor told us to plan to spend some late nights, but most of us were there every evening until 10:00pm or so. Worth every penny. Most technical training classes I attend usually end up with me sitting around fiddling with stuff that is not a part of the assignment because I complete assignments quickly. The instructor picked up on a few of us who were a little more advanced and gave us additional stuff to try. It was refreshing to be continually challenged. The instructor had also built apps for BNR clients, so he had enough experience with the pain points of development (and of Xcode) to give us additional information to minimize those potholes. The fact that there was almost literally nothing else to do there at night encouraged a lot of extracurricular studying.

BNR books are great, and you should have the collection regardless for reference and refreshing purposes, but if you can in any way make it down to one of the bootcamps you will not regret it. It is an intense, superior learning experience.

Tim Trandel
President & CEO | Graduated: 2011

4/22/2018

Course
iOS Essentials with Swift

Overall

Curriculum

Job Support

"Big Nerd Ranch - THE place to get trained...."

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... Read More

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

Bob Czaplicki
Graduated: 2017

4/19/2018

Course
iOS Essentials with Swift

Overall

Curriculum

Job Support

"Big Nerd Ranch's iOS / Swift Training is Great"

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... Read More

Location and amenities 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.

Only downsides are that it can be tough to get away for that long and cost can be high if your company is not covering the training.

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

Cindy Yates
Developer | Graduated: 2016

4/19/2018

Course
iOS Essentials with Swift

Overall

Curriculum

Job Support

"Highly Recommend Big Nerd Ranch Bootcamp"

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... Read More

My instructor was excellent. Very knowledgeable and able to explain difficult (for me) concepts. Small class size and a wonderful group of fellow students made for an excellent learning experience.

Anna Sherman
Software Developer | Graduated: 2017

4/18/2018

Course
Accelerated iOS with Swift

Overall

Curriculum

Job Support

"Phenomenal iOS and Swift Bootcamp"

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,... Read More

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!

Wes Goldwater
CIO | Graduated: 2016

4/16/2018

Course
iOS Essentials with Swift

Overall

Curriculum

Job Support

"Great Training in a Great Environment"

I was deeply impressed with the Big Nerd Ranch bootcamp. Our company was interested in expanding our IT systems into mobile applications and we decided to attend an iOS bootcamp at Asilomar. BNR does a great job at pairing excellent teaching with a retreat... Read More

Devang Kamdar
Application Developer | Graduated: 2016

6/20/2017

Course
iOS Essentials with Swift

Overall

Curriculum

Job Support

"Overall great experience but few areas can be improved."

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... Read More

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.

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