> There are plenty of good developers who could easily immerse themselves in mobile app development for two weeks, and become pretty skilled mobile devs in little time.
It takes more than learning a programming language to become anywhere close to being a good mobile developer. The technical issues such as slow processor, little memory and network interruptions aside, you also have to deal with a usage behavior and human interface which is very different to all desktop application and most web applications. If someone was to ask me for steps to mobile enlightenment, I would probably point him to the human interface guidelines fist:
> There used to be a time where employers would recognize an employee's abilities, and provide for his learning of new subject matter.
This is wishful thinking and I don't believe was ever the case (or maybe before I was born). If I ever wanted to expand my knowledge in a certain direction, I always took it as my own responsibility to ask and demand for it. The company can provide you the resources and learning opportunities, but you have to grab them yourself.
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> There are plenty of good developers who could easily immerse themselves in mobile app development for two weeks, and become pretty skilled mobile devs in little time.
It takes more than learning a programming language to become anywhere close to being a good mobile developer. The technical issues such as slow processor, little memory and network interruptions aside, you also have to deal with a usage behavior and human interface which is very different to all desktop application and most web applications. If someone was to ask me for steps to mobile enlightenment, I would probably point him to the human interface guidelines fist:
Android: http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/i...
iOS: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/userex...
Blackberry: http://docs.blackberry.com/en/developers/deliverables/17964/...
> There used to be a time where employers would recognize an employee's abilities, and provide for his learning of new subject matter.
This is wishful thinking and I don't believe was ever the case (or maybe before I was born). If I ever wanted to expand my knowledge in a certain direction, I always took it as my own responsibility to ask and demand for it. The company can provide you the resources and learning opportunities, but you have to grab them yourself.
I believe Philip Greenspun did something like that with ArsDigita around 2000.