So you want to become an iOS developer?
It is a great choice!
Developing iOS apps is an in-demand skill that is still definitely worth learning and is going to be such for a long time.
However, building apps takes a lot of time. Probably a lot more than you thought.
An integral part of iOS app development is knowing how to program. To become an iOS developer, you should start by learning how to program. If you have no previous experience in any programming language, you are in the right place.
Before getting started, make sure you understand what is programming and mobile app development.
What Is Programming?
Programming means giving instructions to a computer to perform actions.
A computer program is a bundled set of instructions crafted in a way to solve a bigger problem. The instructions are not written the way you would write them to a person. This is because a computer does not understand the text the way you do.
To write instructions to a computer, you need to write them as code in some programming language. A programming language is an intermediary between a computer and a developer. The program code is something that both the developer and the computer can understand.
If you want to learn more about programming in general, feel free to read this article about programming and software development.
In addition to computers, these days you also have mobile devices such as iPhones that operate on different types of apps. These mobile devices gave rise to a completely new subcategory of software development called mobile app development. As it turns out, a mobile app is nothing but a regular computer program that is written in a programming language.
What Is Mobile App Development?
Mobile app development means building mobile apps for mobile devices. In other words, a software developer writes a program that can be run on a mobile device.
It is also good to understand there is much more than programming when it comes to building a successful app.
Roughly speaking, creating a successful mobile app at scale involves:
- Identifying a problem that can be solved with an app.
- Doing competitive research
- Planning the features of the app
- Building mockups using software like Sketch
- Implementing a professional-looking design
- Creating a marketing plan
- Programming the app
- Marketing the app through the roofs
- Collecting user feedback and improving the app indefinitely.
This requires a team of skilled people and years of hard work.
As a mobile app developer, your main job is to write code to maintain an existing app and build new features for it. But remember, it all boils down to solving problems. Thus, you will also take part in customer meetings, planning sessions, and designing the features.
How to Learn iOS Mobile App Development?
iOS development refers to mobile app development for iOS devices.
The iOS apps are usually implemented in a programming language called Swift.
This language was invented by Apple and it solely focuses on building iOS apps.
The first step toward becoming an iOS developer is learning to program in Swift. As a matter of fact, you should solely focus on coding for the first 100 hours at least. During that time, you are not going to build any mobile apps yet. Instead, you are going to learn the basic principles of programming.
Learning how to code is a time-consuming and brain-heavy task. Thus, you should leave all the other distractions out and solely focus on coding. It will take hundreds or even thousands of hours to become a job-ready developer. So remember to be patient!
To get a bigger picture, feel free to read this article: How to Become a Job-Ready iOS Developer in 6 Months.
About This Course
This free Swift course teaches you all the basics of Swift programming.
The course is designed for beginners with little to no previous programming experience.
All the theory is backed up with great examples.
If you read through this course, it is probably going to take 2-3 hours. In practice, it will take dozens of hours.
You have to spend time repeating each and every coding example you see throughout the course. More importantly, you have to spend time understanding the examples by reading the theory and looking at the code yourself.
Remember to experiment with the code and change some values and conditions to get a better feeling for it!
Without actually writing the code, you are never going to learn how to code!
After completing this free Swift course, you understand the basics of Swift programming. More importantly, you can write some basic programs, such as a compound interest calculator. Also, after this course, you are ready to start learning how to build the actual iOS apps.
Next Chapter: Setting Up Xcode