Day 6 has come and gone and the amount of code and hours involved with this training is starting to take its toll on the level of energy.

That said, the day starts off with some really interesting topics that help invigorate me personally. Storyboards are something that Apple appears to be pushing more of late and I think are the most efficient future of iOS UI development.

Like the smaller level user interface elements such as views, buttons, and labels – Storyboards’ interactions feel natural in Interface Builder. Placing constraints isn’t bad but adjusting them or handling different size classes feels is awkward. Hopefully, these workflows can be refined over time.

We also covered connecting to web services, which is incredibly useful in today’s cloud-based world, particularly in the mobile. It was good to learn how iOS and Swift handles web requests and JSON parsing if not exactly fun coding.

One of the unique experiences offered on this trip is zip lining at Banning Mills. A few of us signed up for the one slot set aside for it this week and had a blast. I can admit to having some shaking knees while standing at the top of the launch towers but zipping down the steel cables felt surprisingly relaxing. This is such a great experience, I hope everyone takes this opportunity if given the chance.

Lastly, we covered touch events and ended gesture recognizers. I really like how these features are implemented, very concise and elegant. We built a gesture-based primitive drawing app around these concepts and it was quite satisfying.

The Patriots played a Thursday night game, which many of us gathered around the TV in the main lodge area to chat, have a beverage, and take a night off from coding. The game finished on the final play — a blocked field goal so it was a late night for me. Probably not a great idea given the level of tiredness I was already experiencing.

It is all worth it.