Back in late March I tweeted an idea that crossed my mind while studying Stephen G. Kochan’s “Programming in Objective-C”.

Idea: keep a git repo of the exercises from the programming book(s) you currently read, make repo public upon finishing the book.

— Apostolos (@apas) March 30, 2013

What’s the point, you might ask. I think sharing solved programming exercises from programming books in a single, organized place like a repository is a good way to help folks make progress if they’re stuck somewhere.

Moreover, if you’re studying a programming language, reading others’ code of simple programs is helpful, enhances the learning process and helps you understand the language’s concepts from a different perspective and point of view.

I’d really like to see this idea scaled up—that’s why I tweeted it in the first place. It’d be great if more people would host their code from exercises of programming books on a repo, their blog or simply upload them in a .zip file. It’s not about copy-pasting code, it’s about creating reference sources and, potentially, help others too. And it’s very easy: while studying a book you do the exercises in the first place, simply save the files and throw them in a folder, then push the folder in your repo or share it via Dropbox link on your blog, etc.

Today I publicized my first such repo. It contains the exercises from Stephen G. Kochan’s “Programming in Objective-C” book. It’s currently a work in progress; I’ve only added exercises up to Chapter 7. I will update the repo as soon as I finish each chapter’s exercises. You can check the repo here.

On a relevant note, if you want to learn Objective-C I can only recommend this book. It’s very eloquently written and straight-forward. I’d only like to see more exercises per chapter in future versions.

Fork ahead!