Just saying "Hola!" 👋🏼
Welcome to your first step to becoming an Apple developer. For now: here is your first coaching lesson. It is time to start doing great stuff: becoming a great programmer and yippee this is not just an ordinary developer's journey but a guide to build you as a senior Apple developer. I know you might be wondering: why did I mention you will be an Apple Developer, rather than an iOS developer? Well just know that you can be anything you set your mind to become.
Swift programming language is the official programming language used to create all Apple's platform apps including: macOS, iOS, tvOS, watchOS etc. and now I guess you now know how powerful this language can be.
Well before you begin this journey, just know that you should not take everything fast except you have a good programming knowledge from other programming languages especially Java and C languages. If you are a complete beginner: I will advice you take each article in this series day by day for better understanding, as the saying goes: "You can't get to Wisdom island in one day". So take your time to learn, relax and make sure you understand each concept because I will be explaining each concept as simple as possible. Another point I want to make before I forget is: "You define the days in your calendar"- A day should not be decided by the Geogorian calendar but be defined on your own terms; what do I mean by that? When I said take every article each day, I don't mean you should feel bad if you skip a day because life happens: You might be working so many hours at work, preparing for an exam, taking care of kids, etc. and so on but that's life right? Well, despite life problems can find a way to get to our lives: I will advice you all should spend at least 50 minutes of your day as a dedication to building yourself.
This course should be as a part of your daily habit: such as brushing your teeth and taking your baths. I know it might be a problem at first but with time you will be getting better, and soon it will just be part of you and life problems won't be getting to your ways anymore. You won't say because I have so many house chores, you need to take care of things at work, etc. so you won't brush your teeth or take your bath? This should be same as learning swift because you are not just only becoming a programmer or starting a new journey but that is what you should do when you want to take a step towards becoming the better you.
Why should I become a native developer?
I was thinking of creating another article about native app development but I just thought I should just talk about it here.
I know as a beginner to mobile app development, you might be wondering: so what do we mean by native app development? Well, not so much of a big deal as I will be explaining everything I meant as to regarding what "Native or Cross platform" app development is.
Native App Development
Native app development involves building application for a single OS: Android or iOS. This means if you want to build app for android or iOS you will have to build the app twice: One for android and then another one for iOS. More like a stress right? Yeah, it's stressful and it is expensive also but everything that comes with pain has a gain. With native app development your app will:
- Be fast in performance compared to cross platform applications
- Be ranked as top applications in the App or Google Play store because it is built for overall user experience and performance
- Get access to most of the core application components such as: camera, microphone, fingerprint sensor, geolocation etc.
So you see why you need to go for native mobile app development instead of cross platform. It is a pain that have a good price at the end.
Cross Platform App Development
Cross platform app development is building an app that works with multiple OS: Android and iOS. The developer will just have to code the app once and then the app can be used on both platforms more like a "Write Once Run Anywhere (WORA)" but then simple things, actually can't be that just so simple.
Cross platforms actually help reduce all those stress and fatigue but the price we are going to pay is that our app is going to be slow 😞, and can't be compared to native applications. Well, if only being slow is the price we are going to pay then I will say it should have been better: We also have to suffer from not getting most of the API to access some core components of the app such as: geolocation, camera, etc. (If you are new to Mobile development and you are wondering what APIs are: I will talk more about them in future articles but for now just know that they are some connections Android or iOS provide to their developers to be able to use the camera, fingerprint sensor etc. and that is why you can authenticate your bank app with just your fingerprint or face).
With the above comparison you see why I would advice you choose to be a native app developer (taking iOS into consideration) rather than a cross app developer.
For now we are going to stop here and in our next chapter I will be taking you towards: how to set up your environment so that we can get started with learning.