Finding New Pastures: Big Nerd Ranch's Next Chapter | Hacker News Reader

Finding New Pastures: Big Nerd Ranch's Next Chapter

bignerdranch.com

76 pointszdw35 comments

I have read 4/5 of their books. and 4 editions of the Big Nerd Ranch Android Development, 2 of the Big Nerd Ranch iOS Programming. I found those books exemplary with their quality and depth of the topics with which they taught. I would put the technical guides of similar quality to O’Reilly, and I want to say better than Pakt and I like Pakt.

I am sad to see this go. I read the first one of their books when I was less than a year in the industry.

I wholeheartedly agree on the quality of BNR books, but I’ve always found Pakt to be pretty poor. I consider Pakt books to be overpriced even when 90% off in some big bundle. If you’re getting value out of them, great, I don’t want to diminish that, but for anyone considering them, there are far better options.

I say this having been a technical reviewer on a Pakt book. It was filled with errors, surface level, poorly written and edited, and my main feedback was ignored because it would have added 10 pages, even though it would also have significantly improved the learning outcomes of the book for the specific topic it was about.

To anyone considering writing for Pakt, you owe it to yourself to read any random 5 of their books, and then consider whether you want your name to be attached to that reputation.

The books really are that bad. I think less of someone when I know they've written a book for Pakt.

I tech-reviewed "Node Security". It was something like 7 chapters, where each chapter basically took 1 popular at the time Node library related to auth and implemented in a web app.

I checked all the code samples, found a vulnerability in one, pushed for some misc changes. The quality of the English in it was atrocious (no criticism of the author, writing prose isn't everyone's strong suit) even post Pakt's editing, and I actually found 90% of my feedback was correcting grammar or improving readability, things I'd expect them to be doing.

My main contribution was recommending a chapter on deployment. Fine, the book isn't going to be a technical marvel, but a quick last chapter saying "put your server behind Nginx, here's a bit of config" would have massively improved the security posture of anything being developed from the book, and also educated readers about Node Security far more than any of the other chapters. I gave a thorough and reasoned technical rationale for the inclusion of the chapter. They said no, the book was a 7 chapter book.

I got paid with 1 physical copy of the <100 page book, and 1 free ebook voucher for any other Pakt title.

Unfortunately I think computer books in general are on the decline. It's just very hard for that medium to keep up with the pace of change. This saddens me because it is by far my preferred method of learning new technology, but it certainly seems like video content is winning out over books. YouTube, Udemy, WWDC videos, and similar seem to be the best way to get up to date information now.

There are still some high quality publishers out there, but I fear that we're coming to the end of an era. In addition to the ones you mentioned Manning and No Starch Press produce consistently excellent books as well.

I‘m not sure if it’s really the pace of change or if many people just cannot focus on something for more than 10 or 15 minutes anymore. I‘m aware many people learn from YouTube videos and short tutorials, but I often find what they is quite shallow.

If you're reading this, you'll be missed! Your books have got my SO and I started on our careers in mobile; they have just the right mix of code, background context, and chutzpah-- as compared to the 'picture books' that you might find in B&N these days. Thanks for everything; your voice will be missed.

Digging a little further into the Glassdoor reviews, it's likely that Stellar Elements acquired them for their client base and drove them into the ground due to poor management. Most of the BNR reviews rank positive, but the latest of them complain about the acquisition, and the Stellar Elements reviews have always ranked low.

Interesting genealogy;

Stellar Elements was a non descript B2B consulting firm with no real footprint (like one of many) then gets bought by Amdocs[1], an Israeli company HQ in St Louis? in 2017, at which point SE goes on an acquisition spree, picking of five companies, Ora Interactive, Cibo Global, then BNR, then ADK Group then Roam Digital. Cibo was basically a PR firm, BNR actually had a product, and the other three were IT consulting services.

Looking at various news stories and social media they seem to have tried to synthesize some sort of contract services/training thing.

Given that BNR has a huge person-to-person product and they were acquired in June of 2020, I would speculate that the pandemic killed their training business and they couldn't make payroll[2] and sold themselves off to SE as 'rescue'.

In my experience acquisitions that happen where the two options are 'get acquired' or 'go out of business' the power imbalance is really super significant. The acquired company gets basically zero say in how they should run their own business. With luck it is aligned with the acquirer, sometimes they acquirer just wants some staff and maybe some IP and the rest is just leftovers.

I agree the GlassDoor reviews read like an acquiring company that doesn't care about people they acquired. Often there are retention bonuses for people that are needed to extract the desired parts so I hopefully some of that happened.

It is really sad to me as I think application specific training resources are something big companies don't really do any more and the market is hit or miss with regard to combined in person + reference material. It sounds like I would have enjoyed going to their iOs development class.

[1] Amdocs' web site is awash in "GenAI" buzzwordiness. Which makes me wonder if it was all crypto before :-). I don't know anything about the company really since I've never talked to anyone who works there but man, that website, really throws off a lot of red flags for me. [2] Although this seems odd given the PPP program but its just a guess right?

I used to work right next door to Amdocs, and knew a few people who worked there. It's a legitimate business, or at least it was back in the mid-aughts, and worked on "digital transformation" projects for legacy BigCos.

Bummer about GenAI, but then again it seems like every company these days feels the need to festoon themselves like clowns.

> likely that Stellar Elements [] drove them into the ground due to poor management

Why make up stories unless you know the cause? I imagine it is just as likely BNR was doing poorly, sold out, and continued to do poorly.

I assume they got nailed by the combination of covid travel restrictions followed by the pause in tech hirings/layoffs. Looks like at some point they got acquired, also have an arm that does custom design and app development; possibly that simply pays better.

I took a bootcamp with them many many years ago and have to agree it was one of the better training experiences. Best wishes on your next chapter.

I first learned to program with the Big Nerd Ranch book on Objective-C and book on iOS programming. The format and quality of these books made the learning process work for me. Since that early exposure, I’ve always had a deep respect and appreciation for the authors of those books. I spent some $50 on them, and received so, so much more.

To do this day, when my code composition is going well, it feels like I am completing one of the challenges at the end of a BNR chapter: thinking about the problem when I’m supposed to be doing something else, having my mind blown when the solution appears from an unexpected place, and realizing how far I can stretch my thinking processes and operating paradigms.

The bicycle book and bootcamp with Aaron Hillegass, pre iPhone days, put me on the path to making shareware for MacOS X. That hobby morphed overnight into an iOS programming career when the platform opened up, which persists to this day. I still proudly drink from my Big Nerd Ranch (now vintage?!) mug and owe more than I can say to Aaron's teachings. It was through those works that programming finally clicked for me. Thank you, Big Nerd Ranch!

(Aaron, if you're reading these; do you recall a vegetarian attending bootcamp about 20 years ago and the cooks didn't know anything about how to prepare vegetarian food?)

Did I miss the why? Or was it not stated?

Closest I see is that “the landscape of tech education has evolved.” I agree but it would be interesting to hear more of their take.

Bootcamps don't have anywhere near the quality employers want and they all get lumped together. Its worth less that the University of Phoenix.

They used to be a wonderful place for a company that needs to upskill their employees on a tech stack quickly.

But, those books though. There books seduced my soul to the depth of knowledge and intricate nature to the mobile ecosystem.

I legitimately can’t think of books that were better on mobile.

Agreed - their books were/are inspiring. I think we need books more than ever for iOS and macOS since Apple's documentation doesn't seem to be as good as it used to be.

It seems that Apple intends people to mostly use WWDC videos to learn their newest tech.

Big Nerd Ranch was running boot camps long before the crop of web dev camps that came up in the last little while. It really was a way you could get into Mac OS X and iOS dev early on. Beyond that, it felt like the best way was to have already been an OpenStep developer.

I fondly remember the very first Mac OS X book by Aaron Hillegass. Which was pretty much the only 3rd party book back then, else there was only the Apple docs (which to part still were the NeXT docs).

I always wanted to do the in-person course back then (early 2000s), but never got around it (living in Europe, the whole thing would have been quite expensive).

Oh well, times long gone by, also for BNR it seems.

I did a podcast episode in part about a anthropologist embedding himself the big nerd ranch bootcamps.

The books were the way they were because the bootcamps were constantly testing them. And Aaron was orginally an internal trainer for NeXT and then cocoa.

Aaron and others there put a lot of thought into teaching methodology.

My favorite quote was in the preface “how to learn” of one of their Obj-C/Cocoa books.

TLDR: You are not stupid. This stuff is hard.

—- While learning something new, many students will think, "Damn, this is hard for me. I wonder it am stupid." Because stupidity is such an unthinkably terrible thing in our culture, the students will then spend hours constructing arguments that explain why they are intelligent yet are having difficulties. The moment you start down this path, you have lost your focus.

Aaron used to have a boss named Rock. Rock had earned a degree in astrophysics from Cal Tech and had never had a job that used his knowledge of the heavens.

He was once asked if he regretted getting the degree. "Actually, my degree in astrophysics has proved to be very valuable," he said. "Some things in this world are just hard. When I am struggling with something, I sometimes think Damn, this is hard for me. I wonder if I am stupid,' and then I remember that I have a degree in astrophysics from Cal Tech; I must not be stupid."

Before going any further, assure yourself that you are not stupid and that some things are just hard. Armed with this silly affirmation and a well-rested mind, you are ready to conquer Cocoa.

Wasn’t there also a passage advising getting 10 hours of sleep per night?

Ha, yes!

The previous two paragraphs:

All sorts of people come to our class: the bright and the not so bright, the motivated and the lazy, the experienced and the novice. Inevitably, the people who get the most from the class share one characteristic: They remain focused on the topic at hand.

The first trick to maintaining focus is to get enough sleep: ten hours of sleep each night while you are studying new ideas. Before dismissing this idea, try it. You will wake up refreshed and ready to learn. Caffeine is not a substitute for sleep.

I also remember that from the same book. The best piece of coding advice I’ve ever received.

having failed to learn objective-c back in the day from their intro book... now I realise that I don't have a degree in astrophysics from Cal; there is a distinct possibility that I may be stupid. :-)

To be honest, I also “failed to become a real dev” from these books. It wasn’t until I watched Stanford’s iOS courses (Paul Hagarty) at 2x that I finally understood enough to build my first app. Such is the journey!

One of my favorite classes (and I've taken a lot of classes and seminars), ever, was a BNR bootcamp, about 12 years ago.

They ran a good shop, but teaching is a tough gig.

I still have signed copies of some of their books that I got when I toured their offices a few years ago. They created a really good space for developers with private soundproofed offices for the extroverted sales types to yak on the phone without disturbing everyone else in the building, a large very quiet room with a library vibe where everyone had to STFU and a group room where everyone could talk.

Thank you for taking me by the hand and leading me to a career in software development.

Delivery estimate: May 17, 2012 1 "iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide (3rd Edition) (Big Nerd Ranch Guides)" Conway, Joe; Paperback; $27.26 In Stock Sold by: Amazon.com

I have extremely fond memories of the ranch. It was what got Throttled Pro off the ground and was by far the best Objective-C resource I could have possibly imagined.

Aaron will forever be a hero in my book. Best of luck in the future.

Sad to see them gone. Are there any Swift/Swift UI 1–5 day Bootcamps anywhere in the world that can be recommended?

I don't know anyone doing good 1-5 day bootcamps, but I did recently do the multi-week live Kodeco (formerly Ray Wenderlich) iOS / SwiftUI bootcamp and really enjoyed it. I believe they also now offer an at-your-own-pace version as well.

Well that was vague...

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