The recently released JavaScript jQuery 2.0 library may have just been released, but it’s already made a splash among developers.

Every so often, we highlight the importance of student scholarships by introducing you to the very students they help to succeed. Today, we’re speaking with Nicole Shah, a senior social work major who is also a Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation Scholarship recipient. This scholarship is given to returning female students over the age of 25. If you’re interested in learning more about the Returning Women’s meetings or scholarships, contact the Women’s Center at womens.center@umbc.edu.
Name: Nicole Shah, married mom of 4
Grad Year/Major:  Social Work major, senior year
Affiliations:  Mosaic Center DEI Fall 2012, Conversation Partner ELI Spring 2012
Q:  What benefits have you experienced as a Newcombe Scholar?
A:  Formal connection to the Women’s Center and all of the support the center offers. Monthly returning student’s meetings and having a network of students similar to me in my age and life situation(s) to lean on for support.
Q:  What do you wish traditional students knew about being a non-traditional student?
A:  That age ain’t nothing but a number. Younger students and mature students have a lot to offer one another, don’t be hesitant to reach out in class and on campus. The common denominator is that we are all students at UMBC so choose to focus on that. Once we graduate, we will be working with diverse groups of people so take advantage of learning how to do that now while in college.
Q:  What do you wish the University and Professors knew about being a non-traditional student?
A:  That returning students do not want special treatment, if we choose to tell you some of our extra responsibilities outside of campus it is because we need your support not your pity. There is a difference. No two people are alike therefore keep in mind no two students are alike; there is not a one-size-fits-all approach.
Q:  What is one piece of advice you would offer to new non-traditional students at UMBC?
A:  It is in your best interest to get involved on campus. With families and work responsibilities it does make it more challenging, but it is possible. Campus involvement definitely made my time at UMBC more rich and enjoyable.
Read more about the Charlotte W. Newcombe Scholarship here.
This interview originally appeared on the UMBC Women’s Center website.

Every so often, we highlight the importance of student scholarships by introducing you to the very students they help to succeed. Today, we’re speaking with Nicole Shah, a senior social work major who is also a Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation Scholarship recipient. This scholarship is given to returning female students over the age of 25. If you’re interested in learning more about the Returning Women’s meetings or scholarships, contact the Women’s Center at womens.center@umbc.edu.

Name: Nicole Shah, married mom of 4
Grad Year/Major:  Social Work major, senior year
Affiliations:  Mosaic Center DEI Fall 2012, Conversation Partner ELI Spring 2012

Q:  What benefits have you experienced as a Newcombe Scholar?

A:  Formal connection to the Women’s Center and all of the support the center offers. Monthly returning student’s meetings and having a network of students similar to me in my age and life situation(s) to lean on for support.

Q:  What do you wish traditional students knew about being a non-traditional student?

A:  That age ain’t nothing but a number. Younger students and mature students have a lot to offer one another, don’t be hesitant to reach out in class and on campus. The common denominator is that we are all students at UMBC so choose to focus on that. Once we graduate, we will be working with diverse groups of people so take advantage of learning how to do that now while in college.

Q:  What do you wish the University and Professors knew about being a non-traditional student?

A:  That returning students do not want special treatment, if we choose to tell you some of our extra responsibilities outside of campus it is because we need your support not your pity. There is a difference. No two people are alike therefore keep in mind no two students are alike; there is not a one-size-fits-all approach.

Q:  What is one piece of advice you would offer to new non-traditional students at UMBC?

A:  It is in your best interest to get involved on campus. With families and work responsibilities it does make it more challenging, but it is possible. Campus involvement definitely made my time at UMBC more rich and enjoyable.

Read more about the Charlotte W. Newcombe Scholarship here.

This interview originally appeared on the UMBC Women’s Center website.

For iOS development, I don’t use Interface Builder. I haven’t willfully used a NIB (when I say NIB, I mean Interface Builder file, not the specific format) since iOS 2.0. In the past, I’ve worked with a few folks that really liked using Interface Builder. This is an argument I’ve had over and over.

Instead of mindlessly arguing on one side or the other of this, here’s my “go-to” points when I’m trying to win someone over.

Choosing Explicit over Implicit

Choosing to be explicit is my number one reason to do things in code instead. If someone new to the team opens up a view or view controller, they can see right away where everything is and not have to wonder if this file has a NIB.

I have spent countless hours searching for the source of a bug only to discover it’s some checkbox in one of the half dozen inspectors in Interface Builder. If it was in code, it’s simple to glance at the view code and see the source of the problem much quicker.

Tight Coupling

It is much harder to use Interface Builder for reusable views. I constantly create little views and reuse them all over the place. That’s kind of the point of working in an object-oriented environment. If you use Interface Builder and have outlets and forget to connect the outlet in the second place you use it, you crash at runtime. This is terrible. This introduces a whole new class of bugs.

Now we have this thing that crashes simply because we’re using Interface Builder instead of using code. If it was the exact same thing in code, it wouldn’t crash. Even worse, the compiler can check this for you.

Not to mention, if you use lots of custom views, your NIBs will just be a bunch of invisible boxes. So now you have this tight coupling that is even harder to work with if you were to just lay it out in code.

Have you ever sat staring at some code wondering why it’s not working, only to realize you didn’t connect the outlet or action? I hate that.

Working With Others

Have you ever had a merge conflict in a NIB. It’s the worst. (Granted the XIB format has helped, but it’s just awful instead of impossible now.) If you’re working in a large application with several developers, you will waste an enormous amount of time dealing with this issue.

The worst part is if it gets automatically merged wrong, you might not notice until runtime. With code, you can read the diff and understand what’s happening. NIBs (in either format) are not human readable. This also makes looking at the history of a file useless. If it was code, it’s just Objective-C. We’re good at that.

It’s Part of Xcode

This used to be more of an issue, but I think it’s still worth mentioning. To put it lightly, Xcode is not the most stable piece of software in the world. The text editing part works pretty well. Every time I get a crash while editing a NIB, I grumble to myself and wish it was code even more.

The less I have to use Xcode for more than anything except a text editor with completion and a compiler, the happier I am.

Location, Location, Location

Layout code is not hard. Auto-layout is a bit more code than traditional layout, but it’s still not bad. Trying to work with auto-layout in Interface Builder is maddening. Setting outlets to control built-in constraints is just silliness.

It’s so simple to just override layoutSubviews and do your thing. Personally, I find this much easier to work with than auto-layout for most things.

I think this is a lot of people’s biggest fear is working with layouts in code. Once you get the hang of it, it’s so simple. Making your app universal becomes much more trivial than making separate NIBs for iPhone and iPad. You can simply reuse your code instead of create this tight coupling.

Bottom Line

Interface Builder itself is not bad. It does encourage bad practices, prevents reusability (making working with others more difficult), and slows your workflow. Personally, I avoid using Interface Builder (including storyboards) as much as possible. All of the projects I’ve worked on since 2009 haven’t had NIBs unless it was out of my control.

I think you should save yourself some time, learn a few things, and start moving to code. We are programmers after all.

The post Why I Don’t Use Interface Builder appeared first on Treehouse Blog.

Ms. Adriana Lima, under the advisement of Professor Vanderlei Martins, has been awarded the JCET Graduate Fellowship for academic year 2013-14!  Adriana will continue her research to understand the processes that interconnect the physical characteristics of aerosols to their spectral optical properties. 

Every so often, we highlight the importance of student scholarships by introducing you to the very students they help to succeed. Today, we’re speaking with Nicole Shah, a senior social work major who is also a Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation Scholarship recipient. This scholarship is given to returning female students over the age of 25. If you’re interested in learning more about the Returning Women’s meetings or scholarships, contact the Women’s Center at womens.center@umbc.edu.

Name: Nicole Shah, married mom of 4
Grad Year/Major:  Social Work major, senior year
Affiliations:  Mosaic Center DEI Fall 2012, Conversation Partner ELI Spring 2012

Q:  What benefits have you experienced as a Newcombe Scholar?

A:  Formal connection to the Women’s Center and all of the support the center offers. Monthly returning student’s meetings and having a network of students similar to me in my age and life situation(s) to lean on for support.

Q:  What do you wish traditional students knew about being a non-traditional student?

A:  That age ain’t nothing but a number. Younger students and mature students have a lot to offer one another, don’t be hesitant to reach out in class and on campus. The common denominator is that we are all students at UMBC so choose to focus on that. Once we graduate, we will be working with diverse groups of people so take advantage of learning how to do that now while in college.

Q:  What do you wish the University and Professors knew about being a non-traditional student?

A:  That returning students do not want special treatment, if we choose to tell you some of our extra responsibilities outside of campus it is because we need your support not your pity. There is a difference. No two people are alike therefore keep in mind no two students are alike; there is not a one-size-fits-all approach.

Q:  What is one piece of advice you would offer to new non-traditional students at UMBC?

A:  It is in your best interest to get involved on campus. With families and work responsibilities it does make it more challenging, but it is possible. Campus involvement definitely made my time at UMBC more rich and enjoyable.

Read more about the Charlotte W. Newcombe Scholarship here.

This interview originally appeared on the UMBC Women’s Center website.