Suggestion and help please about making an app

Hi Shuddha Chowdhury

First off I would suggest starting on both the iOS & Android Development tracks which can be found at...

iOS - http://teamtreehouse.com/tracks/ios-development Android - http://teamtreehouse.com/tracks/android-development

(I'd recommend starting on just one first and then moving onto the next, my suggestion would be iOS as it covers the majority of the C language which Java is also part of which is used to code android)

I've just finished the basic Crystal ball application and would say that while I have a good basic understanding of the coding language now I don't think I would yet know enough to create an IM app, theres lots of things to consider with an IM app, it goes far beyond just making it, there will be servers to think about, data bases etc

Expense I assume is going to be dependent on how resource heavy your applications are and what the user base would be.

How long it will take depends on how involved the app is and how polished you want it to be. A huge part of what you describe is the back end though. I honestly believe you'll spend more time on that than the mobile app. Apps are easy to write. Good apps aren't so easy. As far as cost, there is no reason you can't write the app yourself which means just server costs and stuff. That is of course not accounting for your time. If you wanted someone to collaborate with I would be willing to help out where possible. Your app sounds like a great learning experience.

If you do the app courses on here I think you would be prepared to attempt to make an app like this. The ribbit app is a great intro to parse and will help you with the backend part. Even a basic messaging app would be complicated though.

Costs all depend on what you need. For development stages you can use parse's free plan and even into production depending on the size of your userbase. The first parse plan that isnt free costs 200 a month, which is pretty pricy. However parse is a great framework and probably one of the easiest to get up and running, and you have some great videos on treehouse on working with it.

Time depends on how much you are willing to put into it. If you work 1-2 hours every day on your app it would probably take 1-2 months to make a working app, maybe a little more to apply your design to it and make it look pretty.

Thanks everyone.