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iOS Im 14, I've done some scripting before, I'm good at logic and I wanna do iPhone apps!
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I'm also interested in programming and I'm young too. I've read both Kochan and Hillegasses' book and so I'm familiar with cocoa/objective c and I understand it (I wouldn't consider myself "fluent" though) but I don't really know much past the basics. I want to develop for the iPhone but I don't really know where to go from here. I could go more in to Cocoa and learn some of the more advanced things but I'm not sure if that would help. About now my biggest accomplishment in coding was a fully functional text editor with a word count, a character count, a voice synthesizer and a font manager- (but no NSDocument architecture) So I don't really know where to go from here- especially because there aren't many resources for just iPhone development. One of the problems is that because I'm in school I don't have too much time to put into it.
Practice is the best thing to learn new languages and coding. So maybe you should just look at the examples and start your own small project. That's how I learned the specialities of the iPhone plattform.
you sound like you don't think cocoa is the way to go for iphone programming, but it is because it's the only way. Cocoa and objective C. So, just start working. You should probably stick with desktop for awhile longer until you know how to use apple's docs for their classes, but once you can do that just start on the iphone and see what happens. It's never hard to see what you need to learn, and it's only slightly harder to actually learn it.
No don't get me wrong I understand that I need to practice cocoa and objective-c to eventually get onto the iPhone it's just some of the more advanced things that aren't supported by the iPhone yet that I was wondering about. So I guess I should try to master the fundamentals of Cocoa (at least until I would consider myself "proficient" until moving on the iPhone, right?
Take your time to learn Cocoa on the mac. It really pays off; start with the iphone and you'll likely find yourself swallowed by the concepts you need to learn to continue.
Knowing just the basics won't get you close to making iPhone applications. I'm 15 and tried playing with the iPhone SDK and the tools in the SDK like Xcode. Knowing a lot in C++, C, and Objective C helped me in creating easy "Hello World" program but there is more than printing something to the console. Taking classes in AP Java at my school also helped me learn the advanced coding techniques and then I converted it to the C language since most of the command like IF-ELSE statements and FOR loops.
To make iPhone applications you should watch some of the intro videos that are free on iTunes and learn about the different API's you can use.
The image below shows a basic program using Xcode and the iPhone SDK.
To make iPhone applications you should watch some of the intro videos that are free on iTunes and learn about the different API's you can use.
The image below shows a basic program using Xcode and the iPhone SDK.
Attachments
I know the basics of programming... Only the really basic stuff, though, like taking input and printing it on the screen, loops, if statements, etc.
At the moment I am learning C before going on to Objective-C (once I can do C I'll be able to do Objective-C easy from what I read)
Anyway, sorry if I went into too much detail there but the point is a simple question: is there anything you genius experienced programmers can recommend to me to help my progress, help me learn better etc.?
Thanks in advance!
Man you will get a lot of opinions on this ...
I would suggest study algorithms if you already know basic programming syntax. You will get tested in interviews on algos (where a lot of candidates simply fail). At least if the company cares about hiring good people it will test you on it. Also you will get the most mileage out of writing & understanding good algos the earlier you learn. Second learn how to debug and all the coding best practices associated with that.
The rest you'll learn by comparison is of much less value, because stuff (languages, frameworks, APIs, etc) change constantly/become obsolete. Be smart on algorithms, writing clean/concise/readable code, and how to debug without googling and everything else will (IMO) take care of itself.
Cheers
Yea you should learn algorithms and learn how to debug, you have to know hot to follow and do the code in your head while you are scrolling through it to make sure its going to do what you want to do, TEST!!! You dont know how many times I put ":" instead of ";" in a program and had over 150 errors because of one mistake.
i think it highly depends on whether you wish to do computing at uni or if you want to pursue a different career. you could always get away with bad coding habits or not learning the maths behind the code, but you'll probably run into problems debugging that are impossible to solve. my recommendation is to hold off doing iphone apps, i was rash at 14 too and i wanted to program but you've got plenty of time ahead of you to learn, so you might as well learn properly, at least if you see this as a future career. do iphone apps after you have gained enough learning and experience at uni or another place with good tutors that will teach you good code habits instead of bad ones. in the meantime, take up paper routes or something else that will make you pocket money to pass the time.