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iOS How to reach my dream to become a professional iOS programmer?

Z

zolito

macrumors newbie
Original poster
I was always looking for the kind of job that I spend hours and days doing it without getting bored and also that I can gain some money through it.

I graduated from the faculty of Engineering and working in this profession about 9 years ago, without stating too much details, I have never liked this career, although I am doing well in it because I am a hard worker and hate to fail in my work whatever it is.

Programming (objective C specifically) is the thing that I want to go through, will never feel bored and it will limit my interactions with stupid people, and I believe I can sell my applications and do a lot of money.

Any suggestions?
 
zolito said:
I was always looking for the kind of job that I spend hours and days doing it without getting bored and also that I can gain some money through it.

I graduated from the faculty of Engineering and working in this profession about 9 years ago, without stating too much details, I have never liked this career, although I am doing well in it because I am a hard worker and hate to fail in my work whatever it is.

Programming (objective C specifically) is the thing that I want to go through, will never feel bored and it will limit my interactions with stupid people, and I believe I can sell my applications and do a lot of money.

Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

In the attempt of providing a more useful answer; I'd consider starting out as a junior developer for a company, as it can be pretty difficult to start out as an indie developer if that's your idea. You should try to make a few basic apps, explore some ideas and basically test the water before you jump from one career to the next.

Ultimately, for now, I'd consider a lot of reading (and tutorials).

I'd start with something like:

Start Developing iOS Apps Today

While going through that tutorial I'd also note down concepts you don't understand so that you can google them - please do search as many people will have done this tutorial before you and probably have asked the same questions.

When you're quite comfortable with it I'd then move onto other topics in the iOS developer library (http://developer.apple.com) while looking at other resources like the following:


Between those three resources you should be good. If I was to give my past self a single piece of advice when starting out with iOS development (or any form of development, to be fair) it would be to have patience and learn why things are the way they are. It's too easy to go ask a question on this forum and then running off with a good answer but while that may help you in the short term it won't help you in the long term if you don't understand the answer.

Also I should stress that iOS development is no silver bullet. You can certainly make a living but you have to accept that while innovation is still very much possible in this industry (and will be, for a long time) it takes a lot of work to get a good idea into the app store (and more importantly onto iOS devices). Just make sure you're not going to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Best of luck 🙂
 
zolito said:
... will never feel bored and it will limit my interactions with stupid people, and I believe I can sell my applications and do a lot of money.
Click to expand...

Even in iOS programming jobs, one can get stuck with boring project goals and clueless managers or clients. Fortunately, there are currently enough new opportunities arising in iOS app development that one might be able to switch jobs more easily than in many other fields.

Selling your own apps with just a engineering background is playing roulette with the odds stacked against you (a few win big, but most apps don't sell well enough to even buy coffee or beer). A app creator needs strong marketing insight and skills these days, above and beyond tech chops.

You goal post is not only to learn iOS development, but to get your apps approved and into the App store, and then figure out how to get customers to find and download your apps (Apple won't do it for you). Good luck. It's not easy.
 
In addition to the excellent replies above, you should consider a few more things (understand I'm not throwing water on the fire).

iOS programming is a part of mobile development. It's used for games, utilities, business apps, etc...

If you want to go down the path of games, you should consider that many games high end games are made with a game engine (sprite kit, Unity, Cocoa2d...) ... These game engines are sometimes a complete separate study, esp Unity.

If you study Unity for game development, that won't count much for getting a business app dev job.

As you enter the world of programming, you'll find the job market demands are generally around 2 years behind the popularity of the development product:

Example: 2 years ago, iOS jobs wanted 1 to 2 years exp, now they can ask for 3 to 4 years... in 2 years, they'll ask for 4+ years...

It's a HR problem as number of years doesn't make for a great programmer every time.

Swift might change this, if Swift becomes a high demand in the market, they can't ask for 10 years for a language that's 1 year old (ok, they can ask, they won't get 😀)

You might want to dig into the job market a bit and see if what you want is/will be there when you reach that point.

On the learning, I'd add the Big Nerd Ranch books too.
 
Thank you all Ubuntu, firewood and KarlJay for your replies and support.
Special thanks to Ubuntu for the excellent reply.
 
zolito said:
I was always looking for the kind of job that I spend hours and days doing it without getting bored and also that I can gain some money through it.

I graduated from the faculty of Engineering and working in this profession about 9 years ago, without stating too much details, I have never liked this career, although I am doing well in it because I am a hard worker and hate to fail in my work whatever it is.

Programming (objective C specifically) is the thing that I want to go through, will never feel bored and it will limit my interactions with stupid people, and I believe I can sell my applications and do a lot of money.

Any suggestions?
Click to expand...
bit fountain has good courses. On stack social you can get them at 89 dollars. You get support too.
 
Check out Lynda.com 's courses by Simon Allardice (Essentials for C, Objc C, Swift, should give a background in links with Stanfords 106a/b, 193 courses).
 
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