David began his career in Vienna, Austria, as a field service technician, where he traveled extensively in Eastern Europe while it was still under Russian control. In the mid 70s he went to Iran, and traveled extensively there and in the Middle East, Africa, and India.
He then went back to college to earn a MSEE, and in 1979 joined Bell Labs in NJ, where he stayed almost 20 years. In 2004, not finding a job in his chosen field of embedded systems, he decided to pursue something he had always enjoyed immensely, doing Mac development, even though job prospects then did not look all that promising.
In the end, he found contract work with DuPont doing scientific programming, and then later at Princeton Satellite Systems. Having learned iOS, it was an easy transition to full time iOS development.
To can read on on his LinkedIn page.
iOS Journeys 
Followed you here from StackOverFlow – I hope there are other iOS help sites than SOF! I’m glad (and encouraged) to see somebody a little older than me thrive on iOS. I’ve been at it full time for over a month with modest success. I’ve been programming professionally for over 25 years and there’s little about iOS that I can relate to anything I’ve done before.
I jumped into Objective-C programming in 2004 after doing C/assembler embedded system work for decades. It definitely took some time for the light bulb to light! It was only after attending a one week boot camp on Cocoa at the Big Nerd Ranch that I really got it. I would recommend Mike Ash’s site – in fact get his book. Really good topics. StackOverflow is a great place to get a specific answer to a question, but not necessarily for learning in general. I can recommend two books: “iOS Programming, the Big Nerd Ranch Guide” – for short chapters that have you enter code and get something to work. The second is Matt Neuburg’s “Programming iOS 6” – Matt takes a much more in depth look at various classes and technologies, and you can either use this book as a reference, or read it front to back. Many sites like Mike Ash’s go into some topic in depth, but I really don’t know of anything that would be anywhere near as good as Matt’s book. After a while you will see a commonality in the various Apple frameworks and in example code. The very best thing you can do is code – the more you do the more you understand. Also, read the Apple Guide’s – I have printed about 20-30 of them, keep them up to date, and review them from time to time. “Programming Using Objective-C”, an Apple Doc, is also a great guide to read an re-read. Welcome and good luck!
Thanks for the reply
RE: books – I’ve got Programming in Objective C – Kockan, Beginning iOS 6 Development – Mark,Nutting, LaMarche, Olsson and More iOS Development – same authors
At this point I’m willing to try more books .
RE: specific questions at stack overflow-
I’m finding a good deal of code that the IDE will not accept (and that looks obviously wrong to me even as a novice ). I’ve never been a code vampire but at this point I’m willing to go over to the “dark side”.
RE: The Apple Doc
It doesn’t seem to be helping
RE: learning first – I’ve always learned by doing – but once again – at this point…
I’ll go fishing this evening and try to forget all about it.
Tomorrow I’ll go to Stack Overflow and post a specific question that has been answered several times so well – but none of the answers have worked for me (it’s a tabbed app with navigation bar – whats so frustrating is that I’ve got a navigation bar, three tiered app that works fine – I’m just trying to slip it under a tabbed application)
Many will down arrow my meager rep , others will direct me to previous posts , it’ll be humiliating but AT THIS POINT … 🙂
…end of rant…
Hey – Thanks again – Your success is encouraging!
A video by Vishal Kurup enlightened me on the subject. Much better than the arrogant -hence ignorant (you never see one without the other) turds at Stackoverflow. Seems theres a lot of those around. Thanks for ALL your help and especially for helping me over at Stackof$@%t.
I really started my iOS learning from David recommendation. The two books he gave to me are really awesome book. I enjoy a lot. I am still learning ( : Thanks to my lovely friend David.
Dear Mr.dhoerl i found your comment on a topic in stackoverflow about the camera focusing. I got the same trouble. That would be great if you can help me with some advice. Can we discuss about this. Thanks in advance.
It was two years ago that I did that code and I have not played with the camera since. Originally my problem was that the framework was not generating proper KVO – that is, you would get one for one change (off to on) but not in the other direction. I entered a bug, and even talked to Apple engineers about it at the 2011, where they told me it was in process of being fixed. There is a WWDC 2013 session on changes to the Camera APIs – I would for sure watch that. Also, there must be other postings on how to work focus – its a common enough activity.
Good luck!