The Apple, Inc. developer conference WWDC 2016 is fast approaching—and once all the new products and SDKs are announced developers will most likely be champing at the bit to use them. However, what do you do as a budding developer right on the cusp of understanding Apple’s technologies but you don’t feel like you’re quite there?

The answer in many cases is get some training and the developer community has an interesting answer to this: Dev Boot Camps.

Fortunately, a Developer Boot Camp is nothing like an actual military boot camp and it’s not like a summer camp—more like an extended, somewhat expensive learning experience (with some exceptions). However, for some in the field it’s the best way to get up to date on cutting-edge Apple languages and products such as Swift, Objective-C and iOS/OSX UI and UX design.

For the enterprising developer with an employer willing to spend money on training, here’s a short list of Dev Boot Camps available this year to help get a jumpstart on developing for Apple products.

Who: The Mobile Makers Academy

Length: 8 weeks

Course: Build apps in Swift and Objective-C

Cost: $10,995

Schedule: May 23, 2016 to July 14, 2016

Link: http://mobilemakers.co/#what-is-the-mobile-makers-academy

The Mobile Makers Academy is coming up quickly this year and is a developer bootcamp that caters to high school teachers and educators. The idea of the camp is to provide working knowledge in how to develop for iOS devices in Swift and Objective-C and provide an understanding of best practices in the industry. This knowledge can then be translated more easily into classroom and curriculum for students.

The entire bootcamp experience lasts for eight weeks and seeks to build a core understanding of iOS development. The camp is held in Chicago, IL in a studio in Chicago’s River North neighborhood.

The bootcamp offers an understanding of developer languages such as Swift and tools such as Xcode, iOS SDK, Interface Builder and Instruments. It also teaches how to do code reviews, debugging and refactoring of code. At the bootcamp participants can also expect to be familiarized with Agile development, cooperative coding and source control methods such as Git (common in the open source community).

Who: Bitmaker Labs

Length: 9 weeks

Course: Swift, Objective-C, iOS, watchOS, tvOS

Cost: $9,000

Schedule: Fall 2016

Link: https://bitmaker.co/courses/ios-development

Bitmaker is a developer workshop based in Toronto, Canada and lasts approximately nine weeks. It is directed at individuals looking to learn to develop for Apple products across the board by providing training in Swift, Objective-C, the iOS platform and watchOS and tvOS operating systems.

The commitment for this bootcamp is Monday through Friday, 10am until 6pm (unless you’re an early riser and want to be part of “coffee and code” at 9am).

Bitmaker prides itself as one of Canada’s leading tech skills accelerator and as-such seeks to help Apple developers launch their careers by providing training. Aside from the classes in iOS mobile development, Bitmaker also provides UX and product design, web development, front-end web development and even an intro to digital marketing class.

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Who: Code Fellows

Length: 10 weeks for daytime tracks / 20 weeks for night and weekend tracks

Course: Objective-C, Swift, Cocoa, Xcode, UIKit, Git, UIKit, asynchronous code, CoreImage, NSURLSession and JSON, MapKit and CoreLocation, AutoLayout, Source Control, Core Data, Animation, and the app submission process.

Cost: $12,000

Schedule: June 6- Aug. 12, 2016

Link: https://www.codefellows.org/courses/code-401/advanced-software-development-in-ios

The past two training courses were for get-to-know development for iOS and Apple products, for the advanced troupe there is the 10 week track from Code Fellows with Code 401: Advanced Software Development in iOS. Its prerequisites include knowledge from previous such as Code 301: Intermediate Software Development and Code 201: Foundations of Software Development.

Code Fellows does not do online courses (yet) so students will have to meet in classrooms at the company’s Seattle, WA and Portland, OR campuses.

Developers already in the game with software development may want a bootcamp that caters to looking at the advanced fundamentals of Apple development and design and this is it. The 10-week course seeks to provide the skills necessary to create mobile apps in Objective-C and Swift as well as teach the use of industry tools such as Cocoa, Xcode, Git and more.

Developers who participate will also learn how to make use of UIKit, asynchronous code, CoreImage, NSURLSession and JSON, MapKit and CoreLocation, AutoLayout, Source Control, Core Data, Animation, and the app submission process.

Who: Turn To Tech

Length: Immersive – 16 weeks, part time – 8 weeks

Course: iOS architecture, UI/UX design on iOS, storing data in the cloud as well as mobile device using Core Data and SQLite, interacting with social media apps, using iOS device features such as camera and GPS, Objective-C or Swift

Cost: Immersive – $12,000, part time – $3,000

Schedule: Once you apply and have been admitted, you can start right away.

Link: http://turntotech.io/

Turn To Tech seeks to provide a highly comprehensive curriculum for Apple developers involving not just languages and tools, but also modern-day developer concerns such as development for Amazon cloud. With two different bootcamp schedules—an immersive 16-week course and a part-time 8-week course—this training camp looks to cater to a wide variety of learning developers.

The campus for Turn To Tech is located in Silicon Alley in New York City at the corner of 5th Avenue and 23rd Street. Bootcampers can expect to find regular work hours at the camp from 10am until the end of work day.

Participants in Turn To Tech’s bootcamps can expect to learn the fundamentals of iOS architecture, the elements of UI/UX design on iOS (animation, interaction, buttons, tabs, etc.), how to interact with third-party APIs such as Facebook and Twitter and how to use built-in iOS functions such as GPS and cameras.

Who: The Iron Yard

Length: 12 weeks

Course: Objective-C, Swift, iOS – You can build for iOS devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod), Apple TV, Apple Watch, and even Mac OS X apps. You get to work with device hardware technologies like communication (Bluetooth), location (Maps, Core Location), and media capture (Photo, Video, Audio).

Cost: $13,900

Schedule: June

Link: https://www.theironyard.com/courses/objective-c-swift-ios.html

The Iron Yard offers a 12-week immersion curriculum teaching mobile iOS programming to prospective developers. Those joining the class can expect to learn how to program in Objective-C and Swift and be introduced to numerous Apple tools for developing on its mobile platforms.

The Iron Yard has 22 campuses across the U.S. and will be holding mobile courses at Charleston, Charlotte, Detroit, Houston, Orlando, Raleigh and Salt Lake City campuses upcoming. To see a schedule and locate a campus near you see the Objective-C, Swift and iOS SDK course page.

Amid programming fundamentals, the bootcamp teaches design patterns (such as MVC, model view and controller, and OOP, object oriented programming, vs. MF, functional programming), how to use third-party libraries and services (including AFNetworking, ReactiveCocoa, Fabric, CocoaPods), the inner workings of the Cocoa touch libraries, how to use the App Store and the concepts behind Unit and UI testing.

As for development fundamentals when working for business or project, classes include learning about using database as a service (such as Parse, Firebase and CloudKit), working with mobile tools (such as Paw and Dash) and making use of version control services (such as Git, Github and MacDown).

Post includes content from Mellisa Tolentino.

photo credit: Apple Pie-19 via photopin (license)