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Make sure you’re on my newsletter to be notified when it’s published! How long will it take for me to build my app, This is a really hard question to answer because some apps are easy, some are complex and everyone learns at different speeds. Also some people have really busy schedules so they can’t dedicate much time to learning. In terms of number of hours, I would say at least 20 to get some of the fundamentals down. Should I learn Swift or Objective-C, Swift all the way because it’s what Apple has transitioned to. It’s way easier for beginners to pick up and now that it’s open source, Swift is beginning to be used for other things as well such as server side development. Lastly, it’ll also make it a lot easier to find tutorials on the net for Swift because most educators have moved to teaching with Swift.
Do I need a Mac, Can I use a PC, Technically yes, because the program where we write Swift code and design the app is a MacOS app and Apple hasn’t released a Windows equivalent. If you’re technical enough, use virtualization software such as VMWare Workstation and VirtualBox to run MacOS on your PC. In addition to that, there’re a lot of third party solutions to create iOS apps where you wouldn’t need a Mac at all. If you are thinking about buying a Mac, you can buy used to save some money. An iMac, MacBook, Mac Mini.. As long as it can run the latest operating system, you’ll be good to go because Xcode usually requires the latest. A safe bet for current compatibility and getting mileage out of your purchase is to get something less than 2 years old. What sort of equipment do I need, Aside from a Mac (or using one of the PC solutions above), not much else!
You’ll need to download Xcode for free from the Mac App Store. Swift doesn’t need to be downloaded separately. Then you just need to launch Xcode and start following along! You don’t need to pay anything if you just want to run the app on your own device. I’ve noticed that having the right mindset when starting out is a strong predictor of whether or not the student will succeed. So what’s this mindset, Impatience leads to frustration which leads to quitting. As with learning anything new, there’s going to be roadblocks and obstacles but this is where having the right mindset is so important. Those obstacles are opportunities for growth and learning. As a seasoned programmer, I can tell you that a large part of building apps will be troubleshooting and figuring out why your app doesn’t work the way you intended it to. It’s not a knock against the coder; it’s just that when you’re writing code, it’s impossible to foresee 100% of the user scenarios and edge cases and interactions with other parts of your code.
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