How I Got Into App Development & You Should Too

I wanted to share my story about how I got into app development and most important if you are thinking about it why you should really try it.

Time travel – back to when I was a little kid

I was always interested in technology and computers. I took apart computers at a young age and always dabbled with cracking games, torrents and all sorts of hacks. In 2007 when the iPhone came out, I was PROBABLY the first one in Canada to grab one. I went down to the states to grab one, came back and spent days trying to jailbreak it so I can unlock it to work with a Canadian carrier. At that time they didn’t support iPhones. I was so excited to tinker with this awesome new gadget and I knew it was going to be a bit hit. It really absolutely amazed me at how it worked. So it’s no surprise that I would be super interested in apps but honestly never I never had the idea of making my own myself.

Life took me on a different path

Instead I dedicated most of my time towards my education and stock trading. During the 2008 recession, I found a strong interest in finance and the stock market. While in school, I spent hours on end learning to trade and ofcourse started with penny stocks (Stereotypcial beginner 101 trader stuff)

But I did tinker with App development a little

Sometime during all that I did actually try to make an iPhone app. It was only natural that apps peeked my interest, given how much I used my iDevices. During that time it was all in Objective-C. For those old school programmers, its second nature. But for a beginner like myself, It was too much to handle. You have your .h files, your .m files, interfaces, properties that are classified as nonatomic or weak and * everywhere. To me it was a bunch of gibberish. I actually went and bought “Objective-C For Dummies” in the hope that I could eventually make sense of all this. Of course that didn’t happen. At that time [around 2010-2011] app development had a huge barrier of entry. From the coding language to the IDE [integrated development environment aka Xcode] it was heavily reliant on a strong computer science background. Lots of the stuff we take for granted now through the endless amounts of 3rd party liberies had to be written line by line.

How I got into it — FINALLY!!!

Fast forward to mid 2014….Apple introduces — SWIFT — it was hailed as a new approach to programming, that is user intuitive and simply amazingly easy. It was at that moment that I really felt motivated to get into it and learn coding. So the months leading up to my resignation from my full-time job, I already started looking into making apps. Driven by the attention and praise Swift had received, the ever increasing chatter around apps, iPhone sales and Apple’s record profit. Apps were quit possibly at their peek — THEY WERE HUUUUUGGE [Trump accent] — Ahh 🙄

Chronic Timer

Chronic was my first attempt at making a full-fledged app, aside from the mini projects I worked while going through Udemy courses. The idea was not revolutionary nor brilliant, but I needed somewhere to start. I knew with Apple’s Swift and the advancements in Xcode as an IDE, I could make an app now. Instead of adding unneccessary limiations like “Oh but what app?” or “But I don’t have any briliant ideas”, I decided to make an app that I could use daily.

At that time I was a wanna-be boxer and just started taking advantage of the punching bags we had at my local gym. As I got more into it, I needed to improve my cardio and got into skipping rope. Eventually I became such a pro (just kidding) I needed to time myself, and so I downloaded an interval timer. I won’t call it out directly but to me it was outdated and lacked some important features like Healthkit and Apple Watch integration.

So I started making Chronic and Oh boy was that challenging. Version 1.0 ���released to the AppStore was HORRIBLE and to be honest looking back I’m surprised Apple approved it. Take a look below 😂😂😂

But with lots of time dedicated towards learning Swift/Chronic and 15+ iterations afterwards I was able to support iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, HealthKit, Text-To-Speech, 3D Touch, spotlight search, and more. Eventually I added in-app purchases and ads for monetization.

Chronic timer was suppose to be a proof of concept, putting my Swift skills to the test to actually build a real app. But after putting months of effort, day in and day out, I knew I had to go all the way. So I worked iteration after iteration, adding features, fixing bugs, redesigning the interface and expending with an Apple Watch app. Even though it’s really a fancy timer, the challenges faced in all aspects of development are scalable to any app.

StockSwipe

The idea behind StockSwipe came about really during a dream. I was laying in bed thinking of new app ideas beyond Chronic Timer. So I came up with a few ideas, and wrote them into my notes app, then went to sleep. Somewhere in my dreams, I must have come up with the idea because I spoke up with some sort of epiphany Tinder For Stocks.

The idea is really very simple, part of being a trader is finding trade setups, you can trade off. Back in the day when I was an active trader, I would go on various sites and social media platforms looking for trades. Yet there was nothing really intuiative for mobile devices. So I thought, a tinder-like UI for presenting charts. And I started working on how to achieve that. I had to learn how to query Yahoo’s API for the chart images and how to run my own database with the list of symbols. Eventually I got my own server setup and installed a charting libraray on it. It was a huge learning curve and still is one.

The exposure I got in all aspects of development went beyond just iOS and apps. But because of all the pieces that I need to make StockSwipe, I needed to learn new things like Parse, running Ubuntu server and security it after I got hacked. All this will inevitably be extremely useful moving forward.

Maybe this will inspire you to try new things

If you take a look at the stories, both apps came about from an initial interest in developing apps and finding practical applications for them. I created these apps for my own use cases and that was great because I knew the areas I’m developing in and what would make these apps great.

For anyone contemplating app development, I say take the time to learn it, its well worth it. its not just about coding, app development incorporates design, marketing, and even helps you inforce soft skills like: dedication, handling issues and frustrated customers and their feedback. Just like stock trading has taught me money management, risk management and forced me to address mental deficiencies, which in the end resulted in making my a more capable person.

PS heres a weater app project I started BEFORE 🙀���