How to get started with iOS Development
So you finally did it. You decided to look into iOS Development. Enthusiastically, you want to create your first million-dollar app, but soon are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff to learn and resources to learn from.
In the following few lines, I’m going to provide you with all the basics I wish I had known when I first started. Although I assume you’re a complete beginner to programming, this post can also be of help for developers coming from other areas.
Programming language
First things first: I recommend starting to build a solid foundation in programming. Rather than jumping right into it, copy-pasting awful code from various sources without even understanding a thing, only to notice that the next million dollar app is not a feasible thing to do as a one-man-army. Simple concepts on how to solve problems will help you a lot more. Applied to iOS-Development, this means getting to know Swift. It’s an open source programming language built by Apple to replace their much older language Objective-C. Until 2014, Objective-C was the only official way to write iOS applications. Although Objective-C is still a thing, especially in larger applications with a lot of legacy code, I assume that a few years down the road Apple will begin to start deprecating the support for it. This means, that you only, if at all, have to be able to read/understand code written in Objective-C. Therefore, starting out with with Swift is the way to go. At the bottom of this post, I’ll add some links on how to get started with the programming language.
Development environment
Swift, having the benefit of being open source, already has partial support to run on other platforms such as Linux with more to come in the future. iOS-Development, on the other hand, depends on multiple tools that only run on macOS, Apple’s operating system. I assume this is not going to change very soon as almost all of the tools used to build iOS apps are closed source and because Apple is making a lot of money with Mac sales. That basically leaves you with only one option: Buying a Mac. But as mentioned before, I recommend starting with learning Swift anyways, which you can do on any modern computer using tools like Docker and Visual Studio Code to see if it’s even a thing you’re willing to invest your time and money in.
Tools
Speaking of tools, once you decided to pursue your dream of writing iOS apps by getting your hands on macOS, it’s time to think about the applications you are going to need to build your own. The thing you’ll spend most of the time is called Xcode. Xcode is an IDE, which is basically a code editor with a lot more advanced features. Don’t worry too much about those in the beginning as you’ll learn about the most important ones soon enough.
The other tool you’ll have the pleasure to work with will be the Terminal. Don’t be shy to play around with it. I know working without a graphical interface can be daunting at first, but at the same time, the possibilities it opens up are endless. I’d recommend to first get into some basic commands to switch directories, copy files, etc. In my opinion, it’s also helpful to learn about Git, a version control system, rather sooner than later, because it’s at the core of each software development project.
What about you?
Did you already start learning Swift or iOS-Development? What methods did you use and what did you do at the very beginning?
To wrap up this short post, here are some links to the most important things I mentioned:
- The official Swift book (also available in iBooks)
- Overview of Swift & Xcode learning resources
- Learn Git
