How I tripled my salary in 8 weeks
and became an iOS developer
This post is from 2013, to see how far I’ve come, check out what I’m working on now.
In my sophomore year of college, some friends and I were confident (stupid) enough to start our own company. They were in the business school, and I was a BME undergrad making $10.50/hr as a research assistant.
We were going to change the world and become millionaires. Long story short, we didn’t. We raised $30,000, spent it all on outsourcing development, and fell apart when our first developer quit because, “you guys are literally just watching me make your idea happen.”
So we killed the project, and decided there was no way we would fail like that again. We decided to stay in our college town for the summer and teach ourselves iOS so that we’d never have to outsource to make an MVP. This is one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life. This post is my story, which I originally wrote in August, 2013 on The Next Web.
“support tha american dream n make coding available to EVERYONE!!“
— Snoop Dogg
How I went from beginner to the App Store in 2 months
I’ve read many posts in the past asking how to get started learning to code, or asking what people should do next after they’ve finished Code Academy. I wanted to give my story thus far to help others get started, because I’m currently on a “progress high” from how exciting it is to make an app.
No experience
It would be a lie to say I had absolutely no experience, but the experience I had prior to this process was limited to my engineering 101 course, where we learned how to draft algorithms and make small programs in C++ and Matlab. If you can make a game of life then you are at the level of familiarity I was at when I began. I also tried learning Ruby, Rails, CSS/HTML but literally had only done the code academy web fundamentals track.
“Programming is important.” — Enrique Iglesias
Timeline
Week 1 — Lynda.com objective-c course completed. I originally went for the Lynda iOS SDK course; however, in the opening video it tells you to do the objective-c course first. This is not completely necessary if you’re familiar, but helps get you comfortable with the environment (Xcode). I have a free account on Lynda through my university, otherwise it’s $25/mo.
Week 2 — Lynda.com iOS SDK course completed. These are all great instructional videos that come highly recommended. They’re all recorded with screen capture so you can watch the instructor code in real time, as well as copy/paste or reference source files.
Week 3 — I took this week to brainstorm and draft a practice app. This may be a very difficult step for some, and can be skipped, but it helps keep you motivated to learn more. You will immediately discover something you want in your app (paged scroll views) that you don’t know how to implement. So Google it and begin learning. I can almost guarantee someone has already tried it and there is a tutorial available.
Week 4 — Complete a decent, testflight-able app that you can share with people and use. Mine was an app that helps you make decisions. The user was prompted to enter the options they’re comparing (i.e. competing products, iPhone vs. Galaxy), their criteria (i.e. price, graphics, etc.) and how much they care about each criteria, then an algorithm I created would tell them which was the better product for them. Reach out to me (email link) if you’d like the source files.
“Coding is very important when you think about the future, where everything is going. With more phones and tablets and computers being made, and more people having access to every thing and information being shared, I think it’s very important to be able to learn the language of coding and programming.“
— Chris Bosh
Week 5 — Here is where I hit roadblock #1: Paged Scroll View. I reached out to one of my developer friends who referred me to Ray Wenderlich’s site, which has tons of very helpful, very specific tutorials. Several other roadblocks and tutorials followed throughout the week.
Week 6 — I completed Stanford’s iPhone App course on iTunes U. This is very informative with a good instructor but you don’t get access to homework or grading so all you can do is follow along. Still worth watching.
Week 7 — I completed Nick Kuh’s Foundation iPhone App Development book. This was a great read, and walks you through making a Birthday Reminder app in 5 days. Still using it as a reference, and was probably the best tool I used in the process.
Week 8 — if you haven’t already started on a legit app by this point, it’s time to . This is ultimately the best way to learn to code. Although that is said over and over again, I still don’t always do that and I understand it is hard. But thats why we do it, right? to make stuff we would use. So make something. In the end, the cycle of having problems, finding a suitable solution, and implementing it, is the truest way to learn.
I just finished my first app with the help of a designer friend and I’m submitting it to the app store after I edit this!
Since this post, I have had one app rejected, one accepted, and a third in the works. Its been about 6 months since I’ve written this post, which has included two hackathons and multiple job offers from a range of tech companies.
If you thought this was helpful, please recommend it. If you know someone trying to get started with iOS, please share it with them!
