🌱 Foundation: Part I

23 Mar 2020

Well, the pandemic is currently in full swing! I’m lucky enough to be able to continue work on my PhD remotely, but I have also gained quite a bit of extra free time…

That said, I decided to use that time to learn how to build iOS apps. I quickly realized that you have to have a Mac to make apps, so after a few hours of deal-hunting I found a used 2014 Mac Mini on eBay for only $250, not bad!

I also bought a wireless keyboard to use. All in all, the total cost was less than $350, much less than if I had paid for a new MacBook or iMac!

I am now taking a course in iOS development through Udemy. I was able to get it at 90% off for less than $10 - a steal considering it has 50+ hours of content. I’m only about 20% done with the course so far, but the instructor is fantastic. She goes at a good pace for beginners like me.

Here is a screenshot of me making my first app during the course!

It doesn’t really do anything - here I was just learning how to make an app with a single screen with some text and an image. That iPhone you see on the screen is a simulator tool that Apple provides on every Mac. That way, you can test your app without a physical device, if you want.

Since this app, I’ve made a few more as I’ve progressed through the course. In each new app, I learned something new, be it adding navigation bars, adding buttons, styling text, getting data from external services (APIs), making nice UI layouts, etc.

I really like how hands-on this course is. Hopefully, I can finish it in the next few months and have a strong enough knowledge base to start work on my own app idea!