Getting the ball rollin.

This week’s post isn’t very technical, or technical at all really. I just wanted to reflect on what I have done so far this week and give my thoughts about the resources I’ve been using. As I progress through my iOS journey, I hope to make my posts more technical and point out specific things I learned that week, in addition to just a recap.

Apple’s Start Developing iOS Apps tutorial

This past week I started and completed Apple’s Start Developing iOS Apps (Swift) tutorial. I highly recommend it! It’s doesn’t just tell you “here, type this code” but instead it offers a really clear explanation of why the code makes sense and what role it plays within the application. Personally, I read through it pretty quickly as I was following along with the coding because I was excited to be making even a small application, so this week I plan on going back to just read it to pick up any details I missed to make sure I really understand the code. A lot of times what I find happens when following online tutorials is that people are tempted to simply copy and paste the code, but if you take anything away from this post is that you really should not just copy and paste code. Typing it out makes you slow down and think about what the code is doing and really internalize it so that you are able to recreate similar code, as necessary, when you go off to create your own application.

Swift 3.0

So unfortunately it seems that the tutorial has not been updated to the Swift 3 syntax just yet which caused some small road bumps along the way, but luckily Xcode is smart enough to suggest what the correct function, property, etc. has been renamed to in the new syntax.

The other issue I encountered that wasn’t mentioned in the tutorial was when adding the functionality that allows you to choose an image from your photo library. But after a quick Google search I found a helpful blog post which described the changes in privacy settings in iOS 10 which caused the issue and offered a quick and easy fix.

Stanford iOS course

I only watched the first two lectures this week because similar to the Apple tutorial, I’m watching the lecture videos a first time and following along and doing the coding as I watch, and then going back a second time to just listen to his explanation of the code. It might seem like a lot of extra work/time, but I think it will pay off in the long run to help me understand Swift better.

Swift documentation

I commute about 30-40 or so minutes each way to work, so I’ve decided to put this time to use and read the Swift Programming Language documentation. It’s not as interactive as a tutorial, but Apple has done a really good job of writing the documentation so that it’s very easy to understand. Whether you’re an experienced developer just trying to learn the Swift language or someone who is new programming entirely, I definitely suggest reading the documentation. Every programming language has it’s difference and what I really like about the Swift documentation is that it specifically points out when Swift handles something differently than C or Objective C. I feel that this makes the transition from a C based language to Swift much easier.

Women in iOS Meetup

This past Wednesday I attended the Women in iOS meetup. This week’s meetup was a brief tutorial demonstrating how to use Firebase in your iOS application. The tutorial was in Objective C… so I was a little more out of my comfort zone than usual… but that’s not always a bad thing! What I really love about going to meetups is how nice and helpful everyone is. So even though I haven’t really done Objective C at all, the tutorial was still really useful. It actually got me considering adding Objective C to my iOS journey and in fact, most companies still use a lot Objective C. For now I’m going to continue with just Swift, but stay tuned… I may throw in some Objective C resources/tips/etc. here and there.