9 ms·

Your First iOS App

71 points by AshFurrow 14y ago

ctruman 14y ago
Glad to see some books coming from the community!
DigitalSea 14y ago
As someone who has always wanted to learn Objective-C but has never been able to find up-to-date and easy to understand tutorials on building an app, this is something I can get behind.
- greenranger 14y ago
  Are you serious?
- ctruman 14y ago
  Agreed! What defines easy and up to date to you? How would you like the book to be laid out?
- trevorcreech 14y ago
  Check out the "iOS apprentice" tutorials. I think they cost about $30, but it walks you through building 4 non-trivial apps with full source code. It also targets iOS 5 and 6, so most of the cool new features (automatic memory management anyone?) are covered.
- dan1234 14y ago
  Stanford University have been running a very good course for a few years now, and it's freely available on iTunes[1] I'd also recommend the free tutorials[2] and the more in depth ebooks[3] at Ray Wenderlich's site (the content is far better than the site's design would have you believe). Whatever you learn, make sure it covers iOS6 and is ARC based, the older tutorials are very dated and will only confuse. Now, if someone could point me in the direction of some really good Android tutorials… [1]http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi-bin/drupal/ http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi-bin/drupal/ [2]http://www.raywenderlich.com/tutorials http://www.raywenderlich.com/tutorials [3]http://www.raywenderlich.com/store http://www.raywenderlich.com/store
- damoncali 14y ago
  http://nsscreencast.com http://nsscreencast.com is a good resource. Much of it is paid - $9/month, but there's a lot of good free stuff too. It's basically a Railscasts ripoff (and I mean that in the best way - I'm a paid subscriber to both).
rilkeanheart 14y ago
wanted to contribute, filled out the form, and couldn't find a 'continue' button.
BigBalli 14y ago
$5000 for "another" programming book?
- seivan 14y ago
  Those who teach, can't.
- tomcreighton 14y ago
  No, $9 for another programming book. Which is a steal, frankly.
ursus 14y ago
Great initiave, i've always wanted a book like that.
einarvollset 14y ago
This is great - teaching intro level stuff is hard
bmasci 14y ago
Could be cool; I don't know programming but I would love to be able to make some finance apps that no one has seemed to produce thus far.
MaxGabriel 14y ago
Cool, how do you see this comparing to CS193p?
- qnk 14y ago
  Personally, my first attempt to learn iOS development was with CS193p by Stanford University, I was really confused all they way and saw it as something kind of difficult. I almost gave up, but afterwards bought an iOS Programming Guide by Big Nerd Ranch and I felt the opposite. Maybe the pace of the Stanford videos was too fast for me or I'm just not smart enough, but it didn't work in my case. Several months later, and after building several iPhone apps, I gave CS193p another chance, and it was very insightful. I already knew most of the things explained, but it felt like if I was taking and advance course and were completely comfortable with it. CS193p is very valuable to begin with iOS development, but maybe not for everyone. Hands-on, self paced courses with clearly explained code examples are my favorite ones and worked for me.
  - rimantas 14y ago
    The last course (winter 2013) is IMHO a bit too lightweight, it avoids going deeper into some stuff that was touched in earlier courses. I dont's use storyboards so that's another minus for me, because everything is storyboards based. In any case this is solid course and highly recommended. As for books the two I'd highly recommend would be the already mentioned "IOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide"[1] and "Programming iOS 5" [2]. Ray's tutorials are also worth checking out. [1] http://www.bignerdranch.com/book/ios_programming_the_big_nerd_ranch_guide_rd_edition_ http://www.bignerdranch.com/book/ios_programming_the_big_ner... [2] http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920023562.do http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920023562.do
- AshFurrow 14y ago
  It's going to be similar in terms of audience, but less focused on in-depth understanding of each framework and more focused on practical, hands-on learning. I'm a firm believer in experiential learning – I'd rather have someone learn about the NSString class organically through using it than have a chapter devoted to it.
asimjalis 14y ago
I am curious why you ran this on Indiegogo and not on Kickstarter? What are the pros and cons of Indiegogo vs Kickstarter?
- AshFurrow 14y ago
  I wanted to run on Kickstarter originally, but I'm Canadian and they don't allow us to campaign there yet.
abalone 14y ago
What's special about this is the use of GitHub. That has so much potential to improve the learning process. I hope the author will look beyond mere hosting of his sample code to actually showing how to use GitHub to tap a vast community of real working projects to learn from and use. In fact I bet if you reworked it as "Learning iOS Using GitHub" and pitched it to a publisher they might bite.
flightblog 14y ago
When I was first learning Cocoa/CocoaTouch I found it hard to jump from the books I was studying to my own apps. Creating a TabBarViewController, fine. Retrieving location, simple. Creating views and sub-views, there are 100's of tutorials and books with step-by-step code examples. However, when it came time to bring all those pieces together into a real app there was (and still is) a huge gap in available resources. App architecture, memory utilization, debugging/unit testing and code style are areas that I'd love to have Ash cover.
sk2code 14y ago
I just backed your project. Good Luck !! This is simply amazing and the timing for this project is just perfect as I am trying to learn Obj-C and will later on focus my complete attention to the iOS development.

71 points by AshFurrow 14y ago

Glad to see some books coming from the community!

As someone who has always wanted to learn Objective-C but has never been able to find up-to-date and easy to understand tutorials on building an app, this is something I can get behind.

greenranger 14y ago
Are you serious?
ctruman 14y ago
Agreed! What defines easy and up to date to you? How would you like the book to be laid out?
trevorcreech 14y ago
Check out the "iOS apprentice" tutorials. I think they cost about $30, but it walks you through building 4 non-trivial apps with full source code. It also targets iOS 5 and 6, so most of the cool new features (automatic memory management anyone?) are covered.
dan1234 14y ago
Stanford University have been running a very good course for a few years now, and it's freely available on iTunes[1] I'd also recommend the free tutorials[2] and the more in depth ebooks[3] at Ray Wenderlich's site (the content is far better than the site's design would have you believe). Whatever you learn, make sure it covers iOS6 and is ARC based, the older tutorials are very dated and will only confuse. Now, if someone could point me in the direction of some really good Android tutorials… [1]http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi-bin/drupal/ http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi-bin/drupal/ [2]http://www.raywenderlich.com/tutorials http://www.raywenderlich.com/tutorials [3]http://www.raywenderlich.com/store http://www.raywenderlich.com/store
damoncali 14y ago
http://nsscreencast.com http://nsscreencast.com is a good resource. Much of it is paid - $9/month, but there's a lot of good free stuff too. It's basically a Railscasts ripoff (and I mean that in the best way - I'm a paid subscriber to both).

rilkeanheart 14y ago

wanted to contribute, filled out the form, and couldn't find a 'continue' button.

BigBalli 14y ago

$5000 for "another" programming book?

seivan 14y ago
Those who teach, can't.
tomcreighton 14y ago
No, $9 for another programming book. Which is a steal, frankly.

ursus 14y ago

Great initiave, i've always wanted a book like that.

einarvollset 14y ago

This is great - teaching intro level stuff is hard

bmasci 14y ago

Could be cool; I don't know programming but I would love to be able to make some finance apps that no one has seemed to produce thus far.

MaxGabriel 14y ago

Cool, how do you see this comparing to CS193p?

qnk 14y ago
Personally, my first attempt to learn iOS development was with CS193p by Stanford University, I was really confused all they way and saw it as something kind of difficult. I almost gave up, but afterwards bought an iOS Programming Guide by Big Nerd Ranch and I felt the opposite. Maybe the pace of the Stanford videos was too fast for me or I'm just not smart enough, but it didn't work in my case. Several months later, and after building several iPhone apps, I gave CS193p another chance, and it was very insightful. I already knew most of the things explained, but it felt like if I was taking and advance course and were completely comfortable with it. CS193p is very valuable to begin with iOS development, but maybe not for everyone. Hands-on, self paced courses with clearly explained code examples are my favorite ones and worked for me.
- rimantas 14y ago
  The last course (winter 2013) is IMHO a bit too lightweight, it avoids going deeper into some stuff that was touched in earlier courses. I dont's use storyboards so that's another minus for me, because everything is storyboards based. In any case this is solid course and highly recommended. As for books the two I'd highly recommend would be the already mentioned "IOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide"[1] and "Programming iOS 5" [2]. Ray's tutorials are also worth checking out. [1] http://www.bignerdranch.com/book/ios_programming_the_big_nerd_ranch_guide_rd_edition_ http://www.bignerdranch.com/book/ios_programming_the_big_ner... [2] http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920023562.do http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920023562.do
AshFurrow 14y ago
It's going to be similar in terms of audience, but less focused on in-depth understanding of each framework and more focused on practical, hands-on learning. I'm a firm believer in experiential learning – I'd rather have someone learn about the NSString class organically through using it than have a chapter devoted to it.

asimjalis 14y ago

I am curious why you ran this on Indiegogo and not on Kickstarter? What are the pros and cons of Indiegogo vs Kickstarter?

AshFurrow 14y ago
I wanted to run on Kickstarter originally, but I'm Canadian and they don't allow us to campaign there yet.

abalone 14y ago

What's special about this is the use of GitHub. That has so much potential to improve the learning process. I hope the author will look beyond mere hosting of his sample code to actually showing how to use GitHub to tap a vast community of real working projects to learn from and use. In fact I bet if you reworked it as "Learning iOS Using GitHub" and pitched it to a publisher they might bite.

flightblog 14y ago

When I was first learning Cocoa/CocoaTouch I found it hard to jump from the books I was studying to my own apps. Creating a TabBarViewController, fine. Retrieving location, simple. Creating views and sub-views, there are 100's of tutorials and books with step-by-step code examples. However, when it came time to bring all those pieces together into a real app there was (and still is) a huge gap in available resources. App architecture, memory utilization, debugging/unit testing and code style are areas that I'd love to have Ash cover.

sk2code 14y ago

I just backed your project. Good Luck !! This is simply amazing and the timing for this project is just perfect as I am trying to learn Obj-C and will later on focus my complete attention to the iOS development.