<< PROMPT >>
It’s done.
Here’s the app: Prompt
Here’s the website: joinprompt.com
Prompt is a simple, visual, daily scavenger hunt that allows people to share their perspectives in a meaningful and ephemeral way. Prompters have 24 hours to submit and then the following 24 hours to view fellow Prompters submissions. After that the photos are removed from the application, allowing ourselves the freedom of artistic expression without a permanent digital footprint.
So, in answer to my originally posed question — Can a MBA design & develop an iOS app in < 2 months?
Yes.
All told, it took June to learn/practice C and Objective C, then 2.5 weeks of working most waking hours to complete the app, another week to submit and get rejected by apple, and then finally a few days to make their suggested modifications to get approved.
The one thing I didn’t do was document my daily process by posting here regularly. Because of that, my promise to you (dear reader) is — should you have stumbled upon this blog due to a google search or some other means of internet transportation and you are a programming n00b with questions — email me. I’ll write back.
Now let me break down a little bit what happened these past 3 weeks.
My partner that I mentioned in the first or second post? She left the country for a month.
Apart from this sucking on an emotional level, it allowed me to dedicate essentially unlimited time to making this thing. I ate, drank, slept, took the dog to the dog park and coded.
That’s basically it.
The ambiguity of whether or not I would actually be able to do this made me obsessive. I became formulaic and started to embody the essence of code in my own life. I had a routine. I had a defined purpose. I performed the methods or functions necessary to generate an output and that’s about it.
Each day would start with the anxiety of undertaking a task that I had absolutely no idea how to do and usually end with either partial implementation or at least some idea of how to do it.
To be flippant — it essentially felt like placing myself at the bottom of Mt. Everest every morning, summiting between 1-3am and then starting all over again the next day.
I guess what I’m saying is it was hard as shit.
But, it’s doable.
You don’t need Hacker School, App Academy or one of those other organizations that trades their knowledge for your hard earned skrilla.
Is Hacker School and its ilk worth it? Maybe for some people. If you don’t deal well with self-motivation then I totally get their value. And, you get face to face dialogue as well as a network so that’s cool.
But, if you just want to learn, get an app in the store and can keep yourself moving, then as someone who has gone from new student to student with app, I can definitively say that all the tools you’ll need come at a fraction of the cost here on the internets.
Here were my big tools that made this possible:
1) Big Nerd Ranch Guides — Objective C and iOS Programming
2) StackOverflow.com
3) A good backend service like helios.io, Parse or StackMob
4) Time
5) Beer?
So, like I said, I’m here and would love to help anyone else who is looking to take that first step.
