Student Show & Tell Extending Treehouse Projects

Hi, I’m Craig, welcome to the Treehouse Show. 0:00 The Treehouse Show is a weekly conversation with the Treehouse community. 0:02 [SOUND] In this episode, we’re gonna take a look 0:05 at a student submitted iOS weather app project. 0:10 Caleb’s been working on an iOS app, an app for Apple products like the iPhone or 0:16 the iPad, let’s let him talk about the project. 0:20 >> Hello, my name is Caleb Corbider and I've been a Treehouse student for 0:23 about four years now, 0:27 and the project that I've been working on recently is called meteorologist. 0:28 It is a iOS application built for getting the weather in your current location. 0:32 It allows you to sort of also pick a new location that the weather 0:38 will be fetched from forming a map and first geolocation. 0:43 >> That's cool, let's take a look at the app here in an emulator. 0:48 Nice, this looks great. 0:52 I love how you can change the location here when you need to dream about some 0:53 place maybe a little bit warmer, let's go ahead and do that actually. 0:56 So I'm going to change the location, 1:00 I want to go get out to Portland just for a second and 1:03 I want to head over to Mexico, Yelapa, Mexico. 1:08 Sounds delightful, and I'm going to use selective location, 1:12 look at right there on the water 82 degrees that is beautiful. 1:17 So this looks wonderful, we asked Caleb what kind of problems he ran into, 1:22 were's what he said. 1:26 >> The biggest issue that I've run into creating this app is the UI, 1:27 I am by far more a back end developer than a front end developer. 1:31 And one thing that helped a lot with that is open source UI libraries 1:35 that you can find on GitHub. 1:40 >> I feel you on the back end developer having UI struggles, 1:42 I run into this all the time. 1:45 I have a hard enough time coloring in the lines, 1:47 let alone lining up UI elements that industry standards. 1:49 This app looks great though, Caleb, 1:52 I think you can consider yourself a front end developer too. 1:54 It's super responsive, it's clean and crisp design. 1:57 Now I love the fact that you leaned on open source libraries. 2:00 This really helps not only for coding reasons but also for inspiration, I end up 2:03 using examples from the open source UI libraries to help really guide things. 2:07 >> Just really thinking about it, taking breaks as you get stuck on things. 2:11 >> Also, I loved advice you gave of taking breaks again, I can not stress this 2:16 enough, most of the magic happens when you are away from the keyboard. 2:20 Remember, take breaks, they're super important for your mental health and 2:25 your project. 2:29 We ask Caleb what advice he'd have for students building a similar project. 2:30 >> For students that are working with similar projects, especially iOS apps, 2:35 I highly recommend writing your UI in code instead of using the interface builder. 2:40 It gives you a lot of practice that you wouldn't get otherwise, and 2:47 it helps you really understand what goes under the hood. 2:50 It also gives you a lot more customization. 2:53 >> Great advice, now if you don't know what an interface builder is, 2:55 it's a tool that let's you sort of drag and 2:59 drop elements onto a screen to help lay them out. 3:01 What Caleb is suggesting, is not leaning on it as a crutch in an effort to 3:04 see what the interface builder is actually saving you from. 3:08 Now I've heard both approaches here, I think as you're learning using a GUI or 3:12 Graphical User Interface, abstracts away what is really going on. 3:16 Now if you want to learn the nuts and bolts of app development, 3:19 I too would recommend doing it by hand. 3:23 One thing that I'd like to point out is that Caleb actually extended 3:25 a project from the Swift course build a weather app. 3:28 Now by extending, in other words adding additional features and 3:31 tweaks to an existing app, you end up learning a lot. 3:34 Now, please make sure that you do this and 3:37 feel free to take the projects that you build during your courses farther. 3:39 This is an amazing way to here to learn and very much like what you'll be doing in 3:42 your development jobs, adding features to existing applications. 3:46 Thanks for sharing your code on GitHub Caleb, I'm sure people will love to see 3:50 how you did your magic also, thanks for being on the show. 3:54 We absolutely love seeing the amazing things that you all are building, so 3:57 keep them coming. 4:01 Check the teacher's notes for how to submit. 4:02 [SOUND] Thanks for watching the Treehouse Show. 4:04 To get in touch with the show, reach out to me on twitter or 4:11 hit us up at show@teamtreehouse.com. 4:13 I'm going to go back to dreaming about that beach in Mexico. 4:15