The third Iron Coder concluded tonight. Mark Dalrymple emerged victorius! I’m really happy for Mark’s win because his entry was fun, and because it was clear he latched on to the opportunity to use the contest as an opportunity to really learn more about the Mac OS X APIs. I also have a lot of faith that Mark will be a good “chairman” for the next contest.

I came in 3rd or 4th, depending on how you do the math. My entry this time is called What Have You Done For Me Lately. It’s as a relatively snazzy (IMHO) application that gives the user a visual impression of how much time they’re spending in each application over a given period of time. Since the API for this contest was “CoreGraphics,” I used it as an excuse to play with patterns, which I use to fill the bar-graphs.

Download all the entries for the latest contest in a single DMG! Click here. (Thanks to Jon Wight for putting this together).

I take a different approach to Iron Coder than many of the contestants. There is a tendency to make “something cool” at the expense of refinement. These submissions are awesome! They make me laugh and stun me with their creativity. But I stubbornly cling to a different ideal. I use the event as an opportunity to play “what if a product’s entire cycle was 48 hours.” Now, I won’t go so far as to say my submission is bug-free, but I try to make it “release-ready.” That means I hold off adding features if the time limit doesn’t support it. I like the constraints that a 48 hour deadline gives me for producing a “relatively shippable product.” Instead of asking myself how much I can possibly cram into the submission, I ask myself how much can I make “user-ready” and try to accomplish that.

At the end of 48 hours (with time out for sleep, family, and social commitments), what I submit is not exactly product material, but something I can proudly attach the Red Sweater brand to.

This entry was posted to Carbon, Cocoa, Hacking, Programming. Comments are closed. Thanks for reading!