Any iOS Devs Out There? The challenges
-
I've written a full iOS app that even does some drawing to the main View. I actually published it to the App Store (and suffered all the things that means) a little over a year ago. Then I was too cheap and I let my $99 dev account expire so you can't see it on App store now. Here's a quick snapshot of the app just for reference: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EmHYw.png[^] When I wrote that app I learned just enough to get it going because my target was the app, not necessarily learning to develop apps perfectly. Anyways, I have read/been reading a couple of iOS development books. One, I really liked because the author is a very good writer: iOS 12 Programming Fundamentals with Swift: Swift, Xcode, and Cocoa Basics: Matt Neuburg: 9781492044550: Amazon.com: Books[^] But as I got further in the book (unfortunately later parts of chpt 2) I found that the book just went off in tangents of Swift code that I'm probably not going to see until much later. It really bugged me. I want to learn iOS Dev not necessarily every nuance of Swift. It's kind of like a carpenter with a hammer. I need to be great with a hammer but I don't need to know how the they build the hammer head from molten iron. :rolleyes: I've also read a bit of iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide (6th Edition) (Big Nerd Ranch Guides): Christian Keur, Aaron Hillegass: 9780134682334: Amazon.com: Books[
Take a look at one of the Beginning iPhone Development books by David Mark and Jack Nutting. It only deals with the iOS SDK, not so much language. Raywenderlich.com has excellent, solid tutorials that build out concepts from simple to complex, in both Obj-C and Swift, including games. You get to know the platform and the language over time. They've also published a few books. I'm surprised you struggle to find information; sites like Medium.com are thick with Swift / iOS tutorials, and you'll find complete language and UI documentation at developer.apple.com. Apple of course also publishes a free language guide on Swift, which is a handy reference. Mattt Thompson (NSHipster) and others (objc.io) write about iOS extensively. Storyboards also use a form of XML, but I agree there is some dark voodoo going on in Layouts :~
-
Take a look at one of the Beginning iPhone Development books by David Mark and Jack Nutting. It only deals with the iOS SDK, not so much language. Raywenderlich.com has excellent, solid tutorials that build out concepts from simple to complex, in both Obj-C and Swift, including games. You get to know the platform and the language over time. They've also published a few books. I'm surprised you struggle to find information; sites like Medium.com are thick with Swift / iOS tutorials, and you'll find complete language and UI documentation at developer.apple.com. Apple of course also publishes a free language guide on Swift, which is a handy reference. Mattt Thompson (NSHipster) and others (objc.io) write about iOS extensively. Storyboards also use a form of XML, but I agree there is some dark voodoo going on in Layouts :~
Thanks for the feedback. I will check out the Mark/Nutting book. I have stumbled upon Wenderlich and he definitely does have some good stuff too. I think it's also because API names in iOS are so odd -- seem so different (compared to what I find in Win APIs).
Ri_ wrote:
but I agree there is some dark voodoo going on in Layouts
:thumbsup: Thanks for the confirmation on that. :) EDIT Oh, I see the nutting/mark books are quite old (latest one pubbed 2014). A lot has changed since then. Maybe that is part of it too. Thanks again.
-
BTW, here is something to consider: [Why many developers still prefer Objective-C to Swift – Hacking with Swift](https://www.hackingwithswift.com/articles/27/why-many-developers-still-prefer-objective-c-to-swift) It is of course from last year and things do improve rapidly with Swift, but I will wait for now with the switch.
-
I've written a full iOS app that even does some drawing to the main View. I actually published it to the App Store (and suffered all the things that means) a little over a year ago. Then I was too cheap and I let my $99 dev account expire so you can't see it on App store now. Here's a quick snapshot of the app just for reference: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EmHYw.png[^] When I wrote that app I learned just enough to get it going because my target was the app, not necessarily learning to develop apps perfectly. Anyways, I have read/been reading a couple of iOS development books. One, I really liked because the author is a very good writer: iOS 12 Programming Fundamentals with Swift: Swift, Xcode, and Cocoa Basics: Matt Neuburg: 9781492044550: Amazon.com: Books[^] But as I got further in the book (unfortunately later parts of chpt 2) I found that the book just went off in tangents of Swift code that I'm probably not going to see until much later. It really bugged me. I want to learn iOS Dev not necessarily every nuance of Swift. It's kind of like a carpenter with a hammer. I need to be great with a hammer but I don't need to know how the they build the hammer head from molten iron. :rolleyes: I've also read a bit of iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide (6th Edition) (Big Nerd Ranch Guides): Christian Keur, Aaron Hillegass: 9780134682334: Amazon.com: Books[
-
Have you looked at the online courses from Udacity or Coursera? The 3 that I have taken have been very good and two of them were free :) I was able to do them at my own pace.
-
BTW, here is something to consider: [Why many developers still prefer Objective-C to Swift – Hacking with Swift](https://www.hackingwithswift.com/articles/27/why-many-developers-still-prefer-objective-c-to-swift) It is of course from last year and things do improve rapidly with Swift, but I will wait for now with the switch.
That's an interesting article. I wish they'd go back and update it now that Swift 4.2 has released and see if there are any changes in dev attitudes. I also wonder if for those of us who are new(er) to iOS dev that learning Swift is probably easier. I really don't care for the look of Objective-C syntax - since it seems like an oddball version of C and I'm an old C++ dev. I also notice that the things I actually don't like about Swift are the Functional language parts that I also don't like about C# but those things I just have to accept. Thanks again for sharing.:thumbsup:
-
That's an interesting article. I wish they'd go back and update it now that Swift 4.2 has released and see if there are any changes in dev attitudes. I also wonder if for those of us who are new(er) to iOS dev that learning Swift is probably easier. I really don't care for the look of Objective-C syntax - since it seems like an oddball version of C and I'm an old C++ dev. I also notice that the things I actually don't like about Swift are the Functional language parts that I also don't like about C# but those things I just have to accept. Thanks again for sharing.:thumbsup:
-
I've written a full iOS app that even does some drawing to the main View. I actually published it to the App Store (and suffered all the things that means) a little over a year ago. Then I was too cheap and I let my $99 dev account expire so you can't see it on App store now. Here's a quick snapshot of the app just for reference: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EmHYw.png[^] When I wrote that app I learned just enough to get it going because my target was the app, not necessarily learning to develop apps perfectly. Anyways, I have read/been reading a couple of iOS development books. One, I really liked because the author is a very good writer: iOS 12 Programming Fundamentals with Swift: Swift, Xcode, and Cocoa Basics: Matt Neuburg: 9781492044550: Amazon.com: Books[^] But as I got further in the book (unfortunately later parts of chpt 2) I found that the book just went off in tangents of Swift code that I'm probably not going to see until much later. It really bugged me. I want to learn iOS Dev not necessarily every nuance of Swift. It's kind of like a carpenter with a hammer. I need to be great with a hammer but I don't need to know how the they build the hammer head from molten iron. :rolleyes: I've also read a bit of iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide (6th Edition) (Big Nerd Ranch Guides): Christian Keur, Aaron Hillegass: 9780134682334: Amazon.com: Books[
Aaaaaargh!!!!!!!! Stooopid Apple!!!! Every time I lock down the updates after a code review. Apple rolls out the next bunch of updates that depreciates a bunch of code. The last time all Swift 3 compatible code, Gone. The code I wrote I did update, I saw it coming. However, the third party crap can't be arsed to update theirs... Grrr!!! I ended up being the "Apple Guy" because I tried it some time ago as a technology investigation and built a simple App as a proof of concept, no training, just dove in. And now, I'm the "Apple Guy"... Reminds me of this Commit Strip[^]
It was broke, so I fixed it.
-
Aaaaaargh!!!!!!!! Stooopid Apple!!!! Every time I lock down the updates after a code review. Apple rolls out the next bunch of updates that depreciates a bunch of code. The last time all Swift 3 compatible code, Gone. The code I wrote I did update, I saw it coming. However, the third party crap can't be arsed to update theirs... Grrr!!! I ended up being the "Apple Guy" because I tried it some time ago as a technology investigation and built a simple App as a proof of concept, no training, just dove in. And now, I'm the "Apple Guy"... Reminds me of this Commit Strip[^]
It was broke, so I fixed it.
S Houghtelin wrote:
Apple rolls out the next bunch of updates that depreciates a bunch of code. The last time all Swift 3 compatible code, Gone.
:thumbsup: Totally get it. I had a bunch of odd stuff with that whole @objc setting and the app I wrote too. Suddenly the values in my UIPickerView didn't show up, even though they were there. I wrote it up at : Why won't my UIPickerView items display when I change @objc inference to off (on project I converted to Swift 4)? - Stack Overflow[^] "Real" Apple Devs were like, "Oh, this is no worry...." :| ?!? I thought it was stoooopid too. The one thing is that I had some issues with my Android app also. Every time Google updates Android Studio and APIs and especially Gradle (build system that most of us hate) then you have all kinds of work to do to get to the same app you had before. X|
-
S Houghtelin wrote:
Apple rolls out the next bunch of updates that depreciates a bunch of code. The last time all Swift 3 compatible code, Gone.
:thumbsup: Totally get it. I had a bunch of odd stuff with that whole @objc setting and the app I wrote too. Suddenly the values in my UIPickerView didn't show up, even though they were there. I wrote it up at : Why won't my UIPickerView items display when I change @objc inference to off (on project I converted to Swift 4)? - Stack Overflow[^] "Real" Apple Devs were like, "Oh, this is no worry...." :| ?!? I thought it was stoooopid too. The one thing is that I had some issues with my Android app also. Every time Google updates Android Studio and APIs and especially Gradle (build system that most of us hate) then you have all kinds of work to do to get to the same app you had before. X|
raddevus wrote:
Android Studio
Oh yeah, I installed that horrendous cobble-de-guck IDE they have from Google... wrappers over wrappers cobbled together with interpreters for the phone platforms... holy moley. I got it to work with my ZTE phone but definitely not for the faint of heart. I admire your pluck. I asked our Android Dev about Xamarin, he said it works, if you don't mind migraines. I think I'm going to go back to 8-bit assembly. At least once you had that crap down, they didn't keep changing the rules that often. Not until that curly brace stuff came around :laugh:
It was broke, so I fixed it.
-
raddevus wrote:
Android Studio
Oh yeah, I installed that horrendous cobble-de-guck IDE they have from Google... wrappers over wrappers cobbled together with interpreters for the phone platforms... holy moley. I got it to work with my ZTE phone but definitely not for the faint of heart. I admire your pluck. I asked our Android Dev about Xamarin, he said it works, if you don't mind migraines. I think I'm going to go back to 8-bit assembly. At least once you had that crap down, they didn't keep changing the rules that often. Not until that curly brace stuff came around :laugh:
It was broke, so I fixed it.
-
I've written a full iOS app that even does some drawing to the main View. I actually published it to the App Store (and suffered all the things that means) a little over a year ago. Then I was too cheap and I let my $99 dev account expire so you can't see it on App store now. Here's a quick snapshot of the app just for reference: https://i.stack.imgur.com/EmHYw.png[^] When I wrote that app I learned just enough to get it going because my target was the app, not necessarily learning to develop apps perfectly. Anyways, I have read/been reading a couple of iOS development books. One, I really liked because the author is a very good writer: iOS 12 Programming Fundamentals with Swift: Swift, Xcode, and Cocoa Basics: Matt Neuburg: 9781492044550: Amazon.com: Books[^] But as I got further in the book (unfortunately later parts of chpt 2) I found that the book just went off in tangents of Swift code that I'm probably not going to see until much later. It really bugged me. I want to learn iOS Dev not necessarily every nuance of Swift. It's kind of like a carpenter with a hammer. I need to be great with a hammer but I don't need to know how the they build the hammer head from molten iron. :rolleyes: I've also read a bit of iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide (6th Edition) (Big Nerd Ranch Guides): Christian Keur, Aaron Hillegass: 9780134682334: Amazon.com: Books[
I definitely second the RayWenderlich.com recommendation. They stay up to date and have some awesome authors. I like IOS Development With Swift[^]. Manning has the same author doing the content as tutorial videos. I did see that you don't care for those, but he keeps the pace moving pretty quickly. Also, coincidentally, Manning is having a sale today, half off pbooks and videos (code is DOTD120318). Details are their page. I've also read and liked Swift Development with Cocoa[^], although that one is getting a bit old now (2015). The authors are iOS developers. Hope you can find something that suits your needs and isn't out of date. It does change so very quickly that I wonder if books are still the answer.
-
I definitely second the RayWenderlich.com recommendation. They stay up to date and have some awesome authors. I like IOS Development With Swift[^]. Manning has the same author doing the content as tutorial videos. I did see that you don't care for those, but he keeps the pace moving pretty quickly. Also, coincidentally, Manning is having a sale today, half off pbooks and videos (code is DOTD120318). Details are their page. I've also read and liked Swift Development with Cocoa[^], although that one is getting a bit old now (2015). The authors are iOS developers. Hope you can find something that suits your needs and isn't out of date. It does change so very quickly that I wonder if books are still the answer.
I hadn't seen the Manning book. I am checking that one out and it does look good. Thanks for chiming in with all the recommendations.
ajhampson wrote:
It does change so very quickly that I wonder if books are still the answer
I do agree with that. It's amazing how fast the tech changes and the book becomes obsolete.
