Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

iOS

Complete beginner, where to start? *have searched*

Hello!

I am an aspiring non-technical entrepreneur who has decided to become a little more technical.

My interest is predominantly in mobile apps. Social networks and productivity apps etc.

While I'd love to develop hardcore hacker skills, for now, my initial goal is to develop basic mobile prototypes so I can get my initial iterations done for my ideas.

I am completing the digital literacy track right now.

I use Apple products so I'm assuming it's best to stick to what I know, iOS UI and UX etc

I've read one of treehouse a blogs about going with Swift over objective C.

  1. My main question is should I do the swift track or swift 2.0 first? Do I ignore swift 1.0? Why does it still exist if there's still an update?

  2. Does swift only teach me mobile app front end? If later I want to build something like Twitter or Instagram, would I need to learn something like rails or Java or full stack java script? How do I know where to go next?

Thank you for your time!

2 Answers

Reed Carson
Reed Carson
8,306 Points

Go for swift 2.0. No point in learning 1.0, it will just contain outdated bits.

as for iOS development having a front or back end, you will learn how to interact with websites and APIs but its a backend engineers job to build those. You could eventually build those yourself but in my opinion it would be better to focus on app development and let someone else focus specifically on back end, then combine forces so to speak. If your building something like Twitter its not a one man job anyway.

I wouldn't really refer to frontend or backend with mobile development: we basically do both, but you are able to do it all in swift. Learning swift 2.0 should be a solid beginning for any direction you want to take development. Plus once you pick up one language, learning others is much easier if you feel the need to do so.

Start with the swift 2.0 course. Im going through it to refresh myself on everything after being away from programming for a while. It really doesn't take that long, and afterwards you'll have a better idea of "what next".

Moses Williams III
Moses Williams III
28,802 Points

Most apps on the app store are in objective-c and will be needed with third party plugins. I feel it also shows the innovation Apple put into their .syntax. Swift is also not "fully baked" hence you noticing the updates in builds. As a registered Apple developer, I feel starting at the beginning will give you a greater understanding of the environment (Xcode) you will create in. Five years from now Swift, I feel, will be in greater demand. If you are looking to get on the app store now, you will most likely need objective-c. Also look into some of the digital literacy courses here, they may help. I hoped this helped and good luck