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Welcome to the Treehouse Show.

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The Treehouse Show is our weekly
conversation with the Treehouse community.

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[SOUND] In this episode,
we're gonna dive in to a few

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of our recent favorite
community forum posts.

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I can't say it enough,
our community is such a friendly and

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safe place to get answers, feedback,
and advice on your coding journey.

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We're gonna talk about building projects,
the mobile application

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development landscape, and the exciting
possibility of an online Treehouse store.

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You know you want this hoodie.

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Adam Acree asks, is it better to build
projects first or take courses first?

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I love this question, because this is the
chicken and egg question about learning.

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And the answer is yes, you should do both.

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You should build projects and
take courses.

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And that anxiety about beginning that
you talk about Adam is so super common.

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Treehouse student, Aaron Goodrow
suggests working on courses first and

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making sure that your foundational
skills are rock solid.

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Great advice Aaron.

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Another student,

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Rachel Campbell suggests that it's
helpful to build projects as you learn.

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Now she points out,
that as you build a project,

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you'll find problems that you don't yet
have the skills to solve, and

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then you can focus your
learning on the missing parts.

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Rachel also encourages Adam to try it,
and see if it feels right for him.

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Now that's excellent advice, Rachel.

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There is no universal right
way to go about this.

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It's a matter of how you divide and
spend your time.

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Now, courses are going to help
give you a basic understanding of

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how something is done.

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But, until you try to create
something on your own,

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you may not fully understand the why of
the content presented in the courses.

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It's putting that practice to work that
helps really make sure that you got it.

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And don't worry, you'll feel it.

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You'll be watching something and
you'll want to make something.

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Now follow that impulse,
that's what the course is for.

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When you run into something that you can't
do, try to learn that specific thing.

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And when you build it,
you most certainly will be hooked.

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I've been chasing that impulse for
decades now.

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David Holmes asks a great question here
about mobile application development.

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Now this is a hard question and
David is not alone in his pondering here,

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making this a great question
to feature on the show.

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If you have an opinion or thoughts,
please jump in to this convo.

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This is gonna get a little weird.

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Now you can tell by just looking at the
title here that there is a lot going on.

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Now if you aren't aware, there are two big
camps in mobile application development,

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mainly because of
the Smartphone market share.

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You usually either develop for
Apple products, also known as iOS or for

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the Android platform.

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Now, after the two big camps,
Apple and Android,

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you then have four popular options for
building mobile apps.

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By the way, Treehouse teacher Amitt
goes into more detail about this

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on a dev team show episode, Alternatives
to Native Mobile App Development.

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Four popular options for

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mobile development are these,
Native Development in the Native Language.

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So using Swift or

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Objective C to build iPhone apps, or
Java and Kotlin to build Android apps.

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This is the traditional path that we teach
here at Treehouse, and that most employers

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are looking for when they are looking
to hire a mobile developer.

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Web wrappers let you create mobile apps
using HTML and CSS and JavaScript.

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So you could be building apps
by learning basic web design.

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However, these web wrapper
apps are a little limited and

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can't take advantage of all the features
that the native languages do.

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Cross-compilers like Xamarin, Ruby Motion,
Kivy, React Native, or NativeScript.

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Now, with a cross-compiler,

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you leverage one language that
compiles into many native apps.

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Now for example, you can leverage
your C# skills with Xamarin, or

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your Ruby skills with Ruby Motion to
simultaneously build iOS and Android apps.

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Progressive Web Apps.

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Now, [LAUGH] one more wrench to toss into
your what should I learn problem space,

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have you heard of PWAs or
Progressive Web Apps?

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They're basically apps
that use web technology

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that make a native app
experience possible.

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It's kinda like a fresh take
on mobile first web design,

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where you design your website
as a mobile app first.

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You get little icons and everything.

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Now, Gil talks about this in his
introducing progressing web apps workshop.

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And while it may appear that the straight
forward way to learn how to make apps for

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iPhones for example would mean learning
Swift and coding and X Code, what you

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should take away from this is that it's
definitely not the only way to go.

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You can build mobile apps with
almost any programming language,

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mostly with some tradeoffs and
performance and features.

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David also asks about mobile
development from a hiring perspective.

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Is it expected that you know how
to create iOS and Android apps?

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Now, this really depends on the job.

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Most large companies have mobile teams for
each platform and

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do not expect you to know both iOS and
Android.

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However, as Jacob Mishkin points out,
React Native is also an option.

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If you don't know about React Native,
it's a newish cross-compiler, and

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much like Xamarin,

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it allows you to write code that will
produce both native Android and iOS apps.

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These React Native apps are similar
to what a React Native web

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developer would create.

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So sorry, it means you gotta
learn a little bit more.

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However, companies might be slow
to embrace cross-compilers,

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especially if they already
have apps in place.

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Native app development isn't going
away any time soon, especially for

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larger companies.

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But, we are seeing an increasing
amount of job postings for

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this cross-platform development, which,
in addition to student interest,

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always helps drive content creation here.

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And personally, I think that makes
sense from a business perspective.

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If you don't need to maintain two code
bases and two teams of developers,

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this cross-platform type of application
building makes a lot of sense.

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The second part of David's question
revolves around freelancing and learning.

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I do suggest that you learn a native
platform so you get a feeling for

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what it's capable of.

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It will help you to understand
these cross-compiler tools better.

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So since you're already on the job of
Kotlin track and enjoying it, keep at it.

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And remember, progressive web apps
are gaining in popularity and

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might be enough for
what your freelancing clients need.

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Make sure you check those out too.

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Thanks for
asking such a great question David,

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I know others are wondering
the same thing.

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Eddie Aguilar asked a question I know
a lot of you have been wondering.

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Where can I get that hoodie?

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Now, you'll notice here that
Molly kinda trolled in, and

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telling him how comfortable they were.

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But then she went on to say,
there's going to be an online store.

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Now this is the first time
I've ever heard of it.

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Let me go do some spy work and see if
I can get some more deets about this.

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[MUSIC]

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Let's go see Molly.

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She's right over here.

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Hey, Molly.

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>> Hey.
Hey, who is this?

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Is this for the-
>> These are sweatshirts for

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the online store.

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>> The online store?

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>> Mm-hmm.

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>> That's so awesome, we're gonna do it.

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>> Yeah, I think so, yeah.

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>> You didn't seem very certain.

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>> Well,
it's kind of up to Watson, not me.

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>> Watson?

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>> Yeah.
>> How certain are we that we're gonna do

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this online store thing?

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>> 95%.
>> 95%, you heard it here.

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[MUSIC]

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Thanks for watching the Treehouse Show.

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To get in touch with the show,
reach out to me on Twitter or

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email the show at show@teamtreehouse.com.

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See you in the community.