Choosing the right program to learn

I'm on an iPhone and completely new to the tech field. So to clarify what I'm hearing you say is that from iPhone or MacBook I should be able to start with either course and then do Rails. I'm wanting to land a job for now not build a business. At least at this point. Is there one or the other that's best for this? I'm told Swift is a good app development system, but I don't see it on Treehouse. Thoughts?

swift just came out and to develop using swift you have to use Xcode 6 which is currently under an NDA since its in beta, which is why you dont see any videos on swift here on treehouse.

you cant develop for iOS using an iPhone, you need an actual computer like a macbook or a PC somehow running OS X, but having an actual mac is definitely the better option.

you can develop for rails on windows or mac as well. doing the android/iOS track first wont really make a difference as web app development is kind of a different beast.

Im not really sure which would be best for landing a job. I think doing web app development might be a bit better since it exposes you to a little more experience (you get HTML/CSS/Design etc along with rails app development) but like I said im not really too sure

Hi Jeremy

Swift is a very new language, I'm sure Treehouse is planning/preparing a course for it to come in the future. You won't be able to submit iOS or Mac apps made with Swift to the App Store until iOS8 and Yosemite are released next month.

The material in the current iOS course will still be useful going forwards, you may find some tasks are quicker to achieve using Swift.

Your input on jobs and job ideas using apps would be great. Or is it going to be more of a freelance direction? Not sure how this industry works from a business standpoint.

Thanks for the thought and info. I'm new to the field so being good at something is what I'm working toward. What exactly do you mean by down time between projects?

There will be time when work is simply slow for a while or a few days between projects. This is especially true of freelancers. There may be times when you have multiple projects at once then a week of no projects at all.

You say this is true of freelancers but in terms of landing a salaried or hourly job? Like I said I'm totally new and need to develop some consistency in my income so freelance is not the direction for me at this time. Any tips on where I could look for that sort of thing in the field?

It is less true in a company setting but it still happens. It will be shorter but sometimes you might have a day or to without a new project. You will also have less periods of crammed projects because there will likely be multiple teams.