Has any previous non developers created an App?

[OrangeCuse44]

Just curious because I have a few ideas I'd like to develop into an app, although I admittedly have no experience with code or application development at all. I downloaded all the SDK tutorial videos from iTunes in hopes to learn but I'm curious if this will be out of my reach or if anyone like myself has successfully written an app? I consider myself tech and computer savvy.

 

[kockgunner]

bump. after hearing about how that guy made $250 000 in 2 months (which is more than the VP of the US), i wanted to make my own simple app of some sort and charge $0.99 or something. i have no experience with coding and have just started with html recently and i already find it annoying. i don't even know what code the iphone uses. is it cocoa?

 

[edesignuk]

I'm tech and computer savvy too, but I wouldn't dream of trying to go head first in to developing an iPhone app. From what I understand it's a fully featured environment, it's not made any easier because the apps are small or "just for a phone", you still need to fully understand programming concepts, whichever language(s) it uses, and iPhone coding specifics on top of that.

Not to say you couldn't give it a go, but I don't think it's much different from suddenly deciding you wanted to write programs for OS X.

 

[hellomoto4]

Just curious because I have a few ideas I'd like to develop into an app, although I admittedly have no experience with code or application development at all. I downloaded all the SDK tutorial videos from iTunes in hopes to learn but I'm curious if this will be out of my reach or if anyone like myself has successfully written an app? I consider myself tech and computer savvy.

I am exactly the same and was wondering if I should look further into it.
*subscribed*

 

[TripleJ]

I'd done a bit of programming in Flash before, but had no experience in programming for mac/iphone or objective-c (which is the language you'll want to learn) at all.

That being said, with a lot of sleepless nights, eventually I managed to put together something good that I'm actually quite proud of!
currently I have 3 apps out and I'm getting ready to release a huge new app as well Once you know the basics, it gets a bit easier, but there are still plenty of times i want to throw the computer out the window.

Check out my apps here, if you're curious.

 

[liptonlover]

Just so y'all know, to dev for the iphone you need to know objc/cocoa touch, which is just cocoa with a few less things and a few new things.

I'm pretty sure I heard about a few people jumping right in and writing apps....

"after hearing about how that guy made $250 000 in 2 months"
I'm pretty sure you're just remembering about the guy who made trism, who SOLD 250k copies of trism. But it was a free app. A little slip up in wording on someone's part.

 

[nattylux]

Just so y'all know, to dev for the iphone you need to know objc/cocoa touch, which is just cocoa with a few less things and a few new things.

I'm pretty sure I heard about a few people jumping right in and writing apps....

"after hearing about how that guy made $250 000 in 2 months"
I'm pretty sure you're just remembering about the guy who made trism, who SOLD 250k copies of trism. But it was a free app. A little slip up in wording on someone's part.

Liptonlover - no, that's correct. Trism actually made him $250K. See one of the many articles here. It was free for only about a week to boost ratings; see app history here.

That being said, Trism is a huge exception, and people trying to make apps and expecting the same result is about the same as every pretty girl moving to Hollywood expecting to get rich and famous just because Julia Roberts did. Trism was available for jailbroken phones long before the app store opened, and Demiforce was an absolute marketing machine in the months leading up to store opening, attracting Apple's attention and getting them to market the app. Trust me - results are not typical.

----
Imangi on iTunes
Imangi Word Squares on iTunes
http://www.imangi.com

 

[pilotError]

If your young and motivated and have the time and energy to sink into this project, I would say it's do-able.

It will take a lot of energy though if you've never programmed before.

Take a look at the threads on good "C" books and start there before jumping into Obective C.

That will give you a good foundation on Variables, Parameter passing, looping constructs, file i/o, etc. All of which you should have some clue about before jumping into Objective C and the Frameworks.

Once you get the basics down, use an iterative approach. Create a button and get it to do what you want before moving on. Too many start with the full layout and are often swamped with what to do next.

 

[OrangeCuse44]

If your young and motivated and have the time and energy to sink into this project, I would say it's do-able.

It will take a lot of energy though if you've never programmed before.

Take a look at the threads on good "C" books and start there before jumping into Obective C.

That will give you a good foundation on Variables, Parameter passing, looping constructs, file i/o, etc. All of which you should have some clue about before jumping into Objective C and the Frameworks.

Once you get the basics down, use an iterative approach. Create a button and get it to do what you want before moving on. Too many start with the full layout and are often swamped with what to do next.

Thanks for the advice. This may be a longshot but does anyone know of any free ebooks about the basics of objective-c that I can load up using Stanza?

 

[firewood]

\after hearing about how that guy made $250 000 in 2 months ..., i wanted to make my own simple app of some sort

Well, the odds are probably better than buying a lottery ticket. But for every app that makes over $100k, there are probably dozens that make less than $100 a month. What incredibly innovative marketing trick do you have to get your app to the top of the revenue heap?

.

 

[Pring]

Thanks for the advice. This may be a longshot but does anyone know of any free ebooks about the basics of objective-c that I can load up using Stanza?

Apple have more free PDFs than you can shake a stick at on the dev portal (that you can access without paying). You should be able to load those on your iPhone, maybe not in Stanza though.

 

[shoelessone]

Hate to tell you, but if you are serious about this I'd say that ebooks and things on Stanza are NOT how you want to start. You want to research and find a good book, with good lessons, and you want to work through the book so you understand the principles. You want to use the book and tutorials and exercises and go from there.

 

[OrangeCuse44]

Hate to tell you, but if you are serious about this I'd say that ebooks and things on Stanza are NOT how you want to start. You want to research and find a good book, with good lessons, and you want to work through the book so you understand the principles. You want to use the book and tutorials and exercises and go from there.

I know. When I said ebook I meant a book like you speak of but electronically and Stanza to read it.

 

[liptonlover]

My bad, thanks for correcting me.

 

[jaseone]

I know. When I said ebook I meant a book like you speak of but electronically and Stanza to read it.

Reading an ebook about programming on the iPhone would have to be a pretty poor experience with all the code samples and diagrams, you are not going to be able to learn what you need to by going down such a route.

 

[OrangeCuse44]

Reading an ebook about programming on the iPhone would have to be a pretty poor experience with all the code samples and diagrams, you are not going to be able to learn what you need to by going down such a route.

That's a good point. I'll see how it works out. I was just trying to get done what I could during my work commute.

 

[geoelectric]

Your best bet is to rent a subscription on safari.oreilly.com, which is a technical ebook site. The default sub is like $25/mo, but you have a lot of flexibility in exploring many books.

You need to read the books through a full HTML browser, though, and iPhone's Safari wasn't really up to the task last time I tried.

As mentioned before, with as many diagrams/code samples as a programming book must contain, a traditional ebook reader just won't get you very far.

Edit: they have a new iPhone app, but don't get too excited. It covers books downloaded by PDF, but only the full library lets you download a whole book at a time. Also, the download allowance is pretty skimpy on Safari.