Creating your own App?

Using Stanford Videos

Hi, I'm working on my Senior Project as a computer science major, and my school offers nothing in terms of Mac programming. After viewing several tutorials, I came across a class Stanford was offering to teach iPhone and iPod touch development. I'll provide the link at the bottom. These videos have been an excellent tool in learning iPhone development, though they do take some time to watch, but they are very comprehensive. It's basically like you're taking the class at Stanford, without the credit. Anyways, hope this helps.

http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi-bin/index.php

 

Well, as apps go, you've picked a great starter project (i.e. it's not too advanced). However, you're still going to have a fairly steep learning curve if you haven't done any programming before.

I learnt Mac programming over a summer (when I was an undergrad, and had a 12 week holiday to fill). I had done some programming before that, but only simple stuff like BASIC. To learn the Mac stuff, I sat down with all the books I could find, and followed tutorials for a bit first. Then I launched into my own app and used the books as reference.

I mention that because iPhone programming is about the same complexity as Mac programming. To get an idea about how an app is constructed, try watching a video like this one (found by googling). I wouldn't suggest using such a video to learn to code, but it's good to get an idea of what the workflow looks like.

So, to sum up, grab yourself a couple of books (one to teach Objective-C, and one to teach the iPhone SDK) if you're serious about this. If you just want to dabble you might be OK with tutorials you find online. Once you get past the initial learning curve and are more comfortable with what you're doing, then Apple's documentation is pretty good (and all free online), but it's not that beginner friendly.