iOS Anyone trying to learn iOS programing?

[Supertaff]

Im coming back to programming after about 14 years away from it, where I used to be a professional coder working as a contractor. These days I manage IT Architecture teams on big transformation programmes in the Telecommunications sector

In the past i've programmed Z80a and 6502 assemble languages, Visual Basic, Java, C#, Pascal, Delphi, Cobol, Application Master, Batch Master, Systems Control Language, Oracle and Microsoft SQL and some other languages like Ada and Fortran.

These days I miss the problem solving aspect of programming and have started again to learn afresh Swift, while I understand how to programme, getting used to the new xCode IDE and the syntax of the new language is taking some time and I'm using the Rob Percival course from Udemy on iOS 11 and Swift 4 to get me back into the flow of programming and hope to have some nice apps developed in the near future, especially using some of the ARKit items that really interest me.

I like a challenge, so looking forwards to the learning ahead of me. Also need to get hold of a new laptop as the MacBook that I normally use with it's 1.1ghz processor is under powered for development work so will be buying a new MacBook Pro 15" 2.9ghz to go along with this learning.

Will keep an eye on this thread to see how other people progress.

Cheers

Taff

 

[PBG4 Dude]

If you want an awesome free class on iOS programming, watch Paul Hegarty’s cs193p course in iTunes U, iOS programming in Swift. The latest class covers iOS 11 and Swift 4 and is in session now.

Another great place is www.raywenderlich.com . You can get a free app tutorial by signing up for their monthly newsletter and I think it’s a great tutorial for starting at ground zero. The Ray Wenderlich Udemy course is on sale for $10 for about 17 more hours from the time of this post. I dig the tutorials from Ray and company because they update their materials when iOS / Xcode / Swift updates (these are free updates). The free tutorial I mentioned earlier I did back when iOS 6 was new and it was in Objective-C, because Swift didn’t exist yet. It’s been updated every year since, so that’s worth something to me.

 

[infernoguy]

New Swift Developer here. Outside of writing DOS batch files and new PowerShell scripts for my employer, I've never wanted to get into programming - seemed too boring and lots of math lol.

I use to do field work and when I started back in the mid 90s all I did was problem solving. Now i do more back end support but I missed the mental challenge of fixing things. While teaching myself PowerShell, something clicked in me - like maybe this is what coding is all about! I read about Swift an figured i'd jump right in because they say its one of the easier languages to learn or so I thought....

I tried a number of resources including Coding with Chris, www.raywenderlich.com, and even Lydia.com (now Linkedin Learning) and none of them clicked. I realized that it wasn't the material, it was how it was presented to me. I'm not good with watch and learn stuff. I'm all about repetition and learning as I go. I found Hacking with Swift and now I feel a lot better about my pace of learning. Hacking with Swift has a free course where you read along and build 5-7 apps and they teach you what does what every step of the way. I've got a long way to go but I'm excited about the challenge.

 

[Hezzaa]

I'm just getting into iOS development too. Studying in a uni to be a software developed, third year. Just completed a course in iOS Application Development, which also taught the basics of Swift.

My background is PHP/JavaScript and I have been more of a UI/UX guy, but always wanted to do full fledged applications not just pretty shells. In uni the programming theory continued into C# so the experience from there was a great help in catching up Swift. Bought this course https://www.udemy.com/from-design-to-code/ and currently going through it to get more insight on how to implement my designs and ideas. Udemy btw has lot’s of great courses, I have previously had a look at the ones from Rob Percival. They are often in sale for the fraction of the price so don’t in any means pay the full price.

If there are enough interested people maybe someone could start a Telegram group or similar for sharing information, asking help and support?

 

[kyussmondo]

As others have said, learning to become a good developer can take years. I started with a 5 week intensive boot camp in Java. I got to the end of the course and was completely overwhelmed. After working on a bunch of projects at work, all the concepts I learned in that 5 week course all started to click. Two instructors have really helped since then. The first is Simon Allardice. He really helped me understand OOP, databases, the fundamentals of programming, he also really helped me grasp generics and optionals in Swift. His course are quite old now, but still relevant, and still available on Lynda I think. Paul Hudson from Hacking With Swift has also been very helpful like getting my head around things like functional programming in Swift and working with GCD, passing stuff between the main and background thread. Paul keeps all his tutorials up-to-date and walks you through new features in Swift and the new iOS API’s. And then when you are more advanced, there are a lot of great resources out there to go to the next level. John Sundell is great for improving your unit testing and a bunch of other great tips. And if you are into functional programming, follow the guys at Pointfree, but I would definitely not start there.

Experience goes a long way. Just work on apps, whether in a job or in your free time. Also familiarise yourself with the other aspects like source control and following WWDC to keep on top of the latest APIs. But Paul and Simon are great places to start to understand the fundamentals and basics which will give you a good foundation to grow from.