My attempt at #4in4
What I learnt by trying to create 4 Apps in 4 Weeks with my amateur coding skills.
This summer, I decided to extend my dev skills by learning iOS & Web Development so that I can bring some of my ideas to life & take a step towards my goal in life which is to make a difference in people’s lives through the power of technology.
Compared to what I expected to have accomplished at the end of the summer, I didn’t come close & I made only 1 app during the 4 weeks. I failed but that’s alright because I learnt so much & formed some great relationships. Shout out to Kyle Ryan @kylry who also inspired me with the #4in4 idea!!!
Before I drop my little nuggets of wisdom, a little background about my app for 4in4, Procuses.
Inspired by sites such as developerexcuses.com & designerexcuses.com. I decided to create an app that brought all these excuses together to provide a quick way for tech oriented professionals to find an excuse in order to procrastinate adding that new feature/requirement.
Below are my biggest takeaways from the project.
Read a Chapter then Dive Deep & Build Something Fun
Before #4in4, I was going through the Big Nerd Ranch book & I knew my way round the simple stuff but it wasn’t sticking. Then I decided to just dive in & it made a huge difference. My learning & understanding went form linear to exponential.
Get your grounding with a book or a few tutorials then push yourself & jump in the deep end.
Don’t be afraid of failure or Removing a Feature
Due to my deep dive into iOS. There were things I wanted to accomplish with Procuses that I simply couldn’t figure out how to. I would have loved for Procuses to have given the user a way to store their favourite excuses to look back at in a table view.
I struggled to get this working & it started to slow my progress with the app while accelerating my loss of intrest in the project. So much so that I actually gave up on completing it.
An important thing to realise is that your doing it to learn & show off to friends. A basic but working version is much easier to show off then an advance but buggy version.
Take a break, procrastination isn’t always bad
Like I mentioned above, I actually did give up on Procuses. I told myself, you can’t just dive in & that I should have finished the big nerd ranch book first.
What happened was I got so engrossed in my project, whereas the progress I was making with my app was the main deterministic factor as to my mood. Thus, when I kept hitting wall after wall, I kept getting frustrated with no outlet & it just kept building.
A week later, after catching up with old friends & feeling much more relaxed, I decided I’ll have a look at my code for Procuses & that same night, after cutting the extra features, I realised I had a basic working version that I was proud of.
I tidied up my code & submitted. My First App complete. The euphoria was incredible and today the 11th of September, 2013. It’s out in the App Store!!!!!!! & It’s time to show it off to the world.
Download it here & View the source code on GitHub.
Adieu till my next post. Any questions about this project, the source code, 4in4 or any feedback or advice is welcomed in the comments section. =]
