[nesquena]

I like your style and your sentiment here. We are committed to exactly the ideals you outlined here. Tim and I are both startup founders and very product-minded engineers. Our program is less about "whipping together a cheesy iPhone app" and more about helping people learn design, product development, et al. Every engineer is put onto a team which involves planning, designing and building a product idea of their choice with plenty of mentorship along the way. We have big plans to expand curriculum in all sorts of directions. Mobile happens to be in demand and highly sought after in the valley but this is bigger than iOS training.

[gfodor]

Thanks for the reply! I'm sure you guys will learn a ton with these initial pilot offerings. Sans the API hackery part your students will certainly learn a lot of timeless skills about practical product development and design, which is great.

There is always going to be a lot of pressure to teach surface-level skills that are in high demand due to companies who want more warm bodies to hack stuff out. Not even top universities are immune to this, just look at the spread of Java throughout top computer science schools and the proliferation of classes on OOP that are now largely irrelevant just a few years later.

I think what you are doing is great. Don't lose sight of the big picture :)