macOS Creating my first app - Where do I start?

Over the past year or so, I have really been working hard to re-establish my workflows as I have migrated away from Windows to OSX. One thing that is driving me crazy is that there is no easy way to use finder to view files and folders consistently grouped together. You can sort by type and get them to appear that way at certain times, but finder seems to forget the settings on restart. As well, when you switch between the different views of looking at the files, it forgets your settings.

I would like to create a utility that groups the folder display globally as a default setting. I found a tutorial on how this can be done by editing the finder.app file... but I am not sure if that would hold up on system updates. I figure that you might have to go back and update that edit all the time.

Also thought this would be a good exercise for me to delve into app development. If anyone has any ideas how I could go about creating this app, please let me know. I am a solid web designer/programmer but have not yet coded anything for OSX.

edit- found this page and I am downloading xcode which seems to be the first step in the process...

Very cool! I really appreciate the info. Going to bookmark those videos for when I can dig into this in more detail.

Incidentally, the developer of xtrafinder was nice enough to answer my question via email. You can check a setting on the featured tab to give me a more familiar manner of displaying files/folders.

However, I have some other ideas. I used to use an app to rename files rapidly and also right click to resize photos... so I have a few places I want to poke around, like how I can modify the right click menu for starters : )

Thanks again!