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If you log into the developer center, there is an iOS 8.2 beta available with a new version of Xcode and WatchKit.

Imagine trying to teach philology, while also teaching them their first language! This is exactly the problem that CS program directors face.

I work as a researcher in the computer science department at the University of Alabama, and I can tell you this is an ongoing conversation/debate not only here, but at many schools across the southeast. Unlike the valley, we have a tremendous shortage of developers, and that pressure ends up being felt at the university level.

To combat this, classes have been opened that expose the students to software engineering principles while not losing the theory that differentiates computer science from programming. This is largely helping, but is still, in many respects, an experiment.

Also at play is the notion that there are people in computer science that fall more into the design disciplines (i.e. HCI, UI, UX people). Right now, we have nothing for these people except double majoring with art/phycology and the occasional HCI class, but this may change soon. There are certainly frontiers in this area yet to be explored!

Either way, it's a big problem worth discussing, so I am happy I see it here.

*Edited for clarity

On reliable help to professors:

I work as a research engineer (MS EE) at the University of Alabama, and we have experienced a similar problem for our faculty members. The problem has been mitigated to a degree by help from professional staff (like myself) at various "centers" on campus that explore more practical applications of the research being conducted.

We do not receive a stipend for any extra work we do for a professor, but in just a few short years, our input has done wonders for building more complete students.

As for the rise in PhDs, I can confirm the our engineering college is pressuring faculty to graduate more PhDs. Our dean just had a meeting saying we need to "double our PhD output" just to stay competitive. As with most things, he admitted that it all boils down to money.

More PhD students means more potential funding. More funding means better facilities. Better facilities means better quality students, which means a better reputation. Better reputation leads to more/better grants coming your way and the wheel goes round and round...

I develop apps for both major mobile platforms, and when I speak with designers and artists about Android and iOS, they overwhelmingly prefer iOS. Since they use iOS devices themselves, it is their go to platform. It is almost always the one they want to work with.

Oddly, when I ask them why, the answers are mostly qualitative. It has nothing to do with "reaching the most people" or "getting exposure". It's a simple matter of taste. Designers tend to choose iOS products because they identify with them. They see Apple as an institution that they would enjoy being a part of in some way. Almost all the designers I know that are worth their salt use and love their macs for working in Photoshop and Illustrator, so it naturally follows that they prefer the iOS platform, regardless of numbers and market share.

Admittedly, my sample size is only around 50 or so, but this has been my experience.

I'm not knocking this or any particular xxxx-to-mobile platform, but as a native iOS and android developer, I would highly recommend just learning the native languages and frameworks.

First, you have the absolute most control you will ever have over your application. This may not be true when a particular tool becomes popular, say at the release of a new tool, but this definitely shows up as time progresses. Who knows what tools will keep up with the native frameworks terms of functionality?

Another reason that is more qualitative, is that you come into contact different design styles, code styles and paradigms. Objective-C, for instance, is a tricky beast sometimes, but it is an interesting language with a lot to learn both good and bad. The new things you learn will most definitely carry over into your web programming!

The third reason to code natively, and I cannot stress this enough, is third-party library support. Maven and cocoa pods may dependency management much better on the mobile platforms, and using a third-party tool will most likely render all those advancements useless. There are some amazing libraries for both platforms that you definitely don't want to miss. They were reduce the amount of time you spend coding and improve your baseline quality.

Reminds me of a story...

This year my dad, a football coach, lugged an overhead projector with a bucket full of transparencies and visa-vis markers to a football clinic he was asked to speak at. When the younger coaches saw the ancient contraption, word got out on twitter, and my dad was past capacity for his talk. Many of the youngest coaches had never even seen an overhead projector!

By the time his talk was over, he had drawn (we might say derived) his ideas right in front of them, adapting to the questions that came his way. Most people said they really enjoyed the more interactive style my father taught in contrast to the stale power points of some other presenters. A great reminder that some people (including me!) learn best when things are derived in front of them with a dynamic teacher.

I think a lot could be said here for maintainability. As others have mentioned, it really goes a long way to take the time and refactor the class to inherit the extra/common functionality if you are working on a team or working on a project that you know will live a very long time. Swizzling will certainly work, but at what cost to readability, debugging and reuse? That's normally the question I ask before swizzling or doing fancy, dynamic things.

Sometimes the quickest or even the most elegant solution isn't necessarily the "best" one. Best being a subjective term, I would say it depends on what you need from your code over time and with whom.

I work at a development house at the University of Alabama, and we have found that our free GitHub micro account has been a wonderful gateway drug of sorts for learning git. But, having just moved over from an SVN set up to an in-house git system (RhodeCode), I would echo the others who have said that other git tools are better for us than GitHub for teaching git.

Without a doubt, GitHub's educational accounts have been great for our undergraduate students because they have exposed them to great open source code and a community that is excited about development. In short, we have found that the intangible gains have far outweighed the tangible gains of a few private repos. Kudos to the GitHub staff for continuing I make development and collaboration fun and easy.