What are the most valuable parts of Computer Science studies for Cocoa developers?
Another way I might word this question is:
If I’m not going to go to school for Computer Science but want to be a developer working primarily with Cocoa, what are the things I should make sure I learn that I otherwise might miss by being self-taught, and be worse off for it.
Update: Replaced the term “professional Cocoa developer” with “developer primarily working with Cocoa”, in hopes that the intent of my question is somehow clearer.
To be clear, I’ve been working with Cocoa for two years and am comfortable with Objective-C and the Cocoa frameworks, as well as Cocoa design patterns and the developer toolset, and thus am for the most part fluent with the Mac and iPhone platforms. But I have wondered whether I’m missing important CS or SE elements due to being self taught/no formal training, and not coming from other languages or platforms.
This question is for Cocoa developers.
In addition to what’s been pointed out already, I highly recommend reading “The Pragmatic Programmer”. It contains a wealth of information on how to write software, how to manage projects, and how to develop your career, advice that goes well beyond the documentation you look at every day in Xcode. Some of the topics they cover are ones that you might have been exposed to during a standard computer science degree.