iOS Is programming on iOS too different than programming for Mac/Windows?

[Teddersg]

Hey everyone! So, I'm working on a card game and I wanted a companion app to go along with the physical card game. A programmer is interested, but when I told him that I wanted it for mobile, he said he doesn't know mobile development and is unsure if the development is too different.

He knows good programming, but he's still learning.

Is programming between desktop software and mobile development that complicated?

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

If you're a competent OS X programmer that knows Cocoa and Obj-C, programming for iOS should feel pretty familiar - it's the exact same language and many of the frameworks are the same or very similar (with the easier to learn variants being on the iOS side).

If you don't know Obj-C already, then you'll be learning a new language. It's object oriented and is a decedent of C, so if you know C and object orientated programming, then depending on how many different languages you know, picking up Obj-C will take somewhere between 2 days and a month. Learning the new frameworks... that'll take longer.