IPhone Apps

[Clippy]

Interesting article detailing some of the people who have written iPhone/Android apps including a woman who does not traditionally come from a software development background.

Anyone written an iPhone app? Do you need to be a software developer to pick it up or has Apple made it really easy for non-developers as well?

[TimberWolf]

Well Nick Fitz mentions that he has spent a year getting to grips with it all, so I think I'll pass. That and the fact that you need to buy a Mac and get used to all the strange Mac doings and costs.

[NickFitz]

Interesting article detailing some of the people who have written iPhone/Android apps including a woman who does not traditionally come from a software development background.

She was a maths teacher, though, so there's a chance she's had some prior exposure to programming, maybe at university.

Anyone written an iPhone app? Do you need to be a software developer to pick it up or has Apple made it really easy for non-developers as well?

You need to learn Objective C, which is basically C with Smalltalk-like extensions. So you need to be able to get your head around pointers and so forth for the C part, and OOP for the Smalltalk part.

Once you've done that, the APIs are extensive and generally well-designed. All the usual rules of software development still apply, though, and life is a lot easier if you're comfortable with things like looking through hex dumps of memory and reading disassemblies of the ARM (x86 on the simulator) machine code when debugging.

[SupremeSpod]

Anyone written an iPhone app? Do you need to be a software developer to pick it up or has Apple made it really easy for non-developers as well?

Not an iPhone app but 3 Android apps.

[minestrone]

Not an iPhone app but 3 Android apps.

GoatFinder

Dial A Goat

Goats 'r' us

[northernladuk]

GoatFinder

Dial A Goat

Goats 'r' us

So he isn't responsible for Rate My Goat ?

[Durbs]

or has Apple made it really easy for non-developers as well?

Absofookinlutely not.

I've been playing with it for a few months now and its only just clicked with me and started to make sense. Its mainly the toolset that is the hardest thing to pick up (especially for a .NET dev used to the beauty of Visual Studio, Interface builder is a turd to work with), the code syntax isn't too bad as there are millions of code snippets out there to look at and play with and the documentation is good.

Should hopefully be submitting my first app to the app store in a couple of weeks time

But it certainly isn't easy at all IMO. The next release of XCode looks good though, they've integrated it with Interface Builder so hopefully should be a nicer environment to code in.