Beginner programming

[LSarge]

I am a teacher and getting my masters in Learning Design and Technology. I have an iPhone 6, MacBook Pro retina, and iPad Air. I would love to learn a bit of programming and possibly develop educational apps in the future. However, I have no background in programming and not sure where to start.

Any advice as to where I can start to learn more about programming and app development?

Thanks for the help!!

 

[Broph]

There's plenty of great resources online. You're lucky you have a Mac, which means you can develop for iOS using Xcode (Apple's developer software).

I've just started learning, too. For iOS, I'd probably suggest you start with Objective-C, but you can probably get away with learning Swift, but may find some things confusing.

Personally, I'm a subscriber of Teamtreehouse ( http://teamtreehouse.com/home ). I'm learning Swift at the moment, and have also done some of their Objective-C tutorials.

There's other options, too. I heard of (when doing my research):

• CodeSchool ( https://www.codeschool.com/courses/try-ios )
• Code Academy ( Doesn't teach iOS programming, but is good for web-programming)

But, as I said, I think the best option is teamtreehouse, and go on their iOS programming track.

Good luck!

 

[superscape]

Hi,

I'd second Swift and/or Objective-C if you're mainly interested in app development. If you choose Objective-C then working through a few beginners guides to C first might be helpful.

I found http://www.raywenderlich.com a very useful tutorial site, and still often refer back to it. People also often speak highly of the various books available from Big Nerd Ranch (http://www.bignerdranch.com/we-write/) although I've not read them myself so I can't comment.

Good luck! Learning to code is a series of ups and downs. Stick with it. Stay calm. And always read the documentation. ;-)

Rob

 

[AndyK]

Don't skip objective c in favour of swift you'll regret it later on when you start learning past making basic stuff just print to console.

 

[gnasher729]

To get all the Apple developer tools for free: First get an Apple ID, then go to developer.apple.com, click on "Become a member", next page "Compare developer programs", and on the bottom it says "if you are not ready to pay, learn more", next page you register for free as an Apple developer.

You can then download the latest released tools (registered developers paying $99 a year get pre-release tools as well); you can write Mac applications and run them on any Mac, you can write iOS applications but they will only run on your Mac in a simulator.

 

[AppleSarge]

Thanks guys. Sorry for the different profile. I decided to make an official one as I used Tapatalk profile in the past. Im going to start looking into these things tonight. I just created a twitter account for this adventure as well (@AppleSarge). If there is anything on there I should keep an eye on, let me know!

 

[960design]

Any advice as to where I can start to learn more about programming and app development?

Hello World!
I'd recommend lynda dot com for some very good beginner tutorials. I believe there is a 30 day free trial.

I've read Big Nerd Ranch and it is a fantastic book, but I feel the videos through Lynda help get a new programmer up to speed much faster. Once you have the workflow skeleton built in your mind, you can add the muscle and flesh to become a great developer.

Good luck!