Best mobile app development tool?

Fixing and making things, what tools to get and what skills to learn, ...
Did
Posts: 693
Joined: Mon Apr 01, 2013 7:50 am

Re: Best mobile app development tool?

Post by Did »

Thanks. Am watching an MIT EDX free course to ease myself into it all.

Fish
Posts: 570
Joined: Sun Jun 12, 2016 9:09 am

Re: Best mobile app development tool?

Post by Fish »

@pukingRainbows For an idea of what can be made at the beginner level, search for "CS193p" which is Stanford's iPhone App Dev class(*). Course materials including video lectures freely available through iTunes U. Doing the assignments on your own is a great way to gain experience (and test your frustration tolerance). I used the foundation from this course to make my own games and personal productivity apps. Nothing particularly impressive compared to what is offered for free, but it's rather magical seeing your ideas come to life on a smartphone.

(*)This was a while back so there might be even better resources now. For obvious reasons, follow the current course offering if you do this. Otherwise you'll quickly get frustrated when the lecture code examples don't work as you attempt them using the latest tools.

@bryan/brute/others: How much experience is needed to get good enough for paid work? In my estimation 1,000 hours would suffice for entry level; much less for someone with CS background and actual dev experience.

One thing that struck me, as someone working outside of tech, is how fast this stuff is changing. Tutorials from last year won't work verbatim using the latest tools. And tutorials from 3 years ago... forget it. While the barriers to entry may be low due to demand, staying current requires an ongoing time commitment, preferably through paid work experience. You can't leave and expect to come back in 5 years without paying your dues again.

BRUTE
Posts: 3797
Joined: Sat Dec 26, 2015 5:20 pm

Re: Best mobile app development tool?

Post by BRUTE »

Did/Fish:

like with most skills, it's 5% lecture/learning and 95% practice. still better to have good instruction over no instruction, but CS class isn't what makes a programmer, it's programming.

1000 hours sounds about right. brute knows several humans that went through various coding bootcamps instead of CS, coming from diverse backgrounds such as literature, philosophy, or social sciences. these humans have all the requisite knowledge, got tons of practice in, and are making six figures. these bootcamps seem to last about 12-16 weeks, and are 60+ hours per week of effort. this would yield about 700-1500 hours of practice, depending on how much effort an individual human has put into it and how much experience they had before.

it's likely possible to get the 1000 hours without the bootcamp. the difficulty is in structuring 1000 hours of practice in a field one does not know yet, without the social support and pressure of the bootcamp. brute isn't saying bootcamps are the way to go, but they seem a pretty efficient way of getting good at programming quickly.

the 1000 hours are more for general programming. once the general skill is picked up, adopting a specific framework should take far less. some can be picked up over the weekend (new javascript frameworks), some will take a few months (getting into iOS first, or something else that's rather specific).

brute's a big fan of getting paid to learn on the job. if sufficient basic programming skill is demonstrated, companies are happy to hire humans and have them learn the specifics on the job. a month or two later, the human is practically an expert in that skill, or at least good enough to be productive and earn their keep.

bryan
Posts: 1061
Joined: Sat Nov 29, 2014 2:01 am
Location: mostly Bay Area

Re: Best mobile app development tool?

Post by bryan »

Fish wrote:
Sat Apr 08, 2017 9:34 am
@bryan/brute/others: How much experience is needed to get good enough for paid work? In my estimation 1,000 hours would suffice for entry level; much less for someone with CS background and actual dev experience.

One thing that struck me, as someone working outside of tech, is how fast this stuff is changing. Tutorials from last year won't work verbatim using the latest tools. And tutorials from 3 years ago... forget it.
First I'll echo @brute's response about practical experience and learning on the job. One of my best educational experiences during my university years was actually at my coop job one semester. So it may be worth it to do what you can to target an entry level job (probably at a start-up, as competition would be more fierce for big companies) using your github or personal website as most of your resume and plan to jump to a better job after six months or a year.

I'm in lower level software where things don't change so drastically or as fast. You could probably pick such a software engineer from 20 years ago and ta would be in fairly good shape from day 1. For better or worse you can follow hacker news RSS feed to keep abreast of trendy technologies or big news.

Scott 2
Posts: 2825
Joined: Sun Feb 12, 2012 10:34 pm

Re: Best mobile app development tool?

Post by Scott 2 »

The pace of change isn't as fast as it first seems. There is a core set of principles in use, once you learn to recognize them, they repeat in every hot new trend.

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