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Cole iOS, Old Dude, New Tricks

Journal
#1

I started with CWC last year, doing the free courses, just to get my feet wet and have a better idea of how app dev works.
I’m a cofounder of a small company in the fitness realm, one of the partners took time off during COVID to teach himself React and React Native, and build our companies first app. Till then we’d been using Excel spreadsheets as our main product.

This year I got back to learning SWIFT when I saw CWC had gone to a subscription model, and Chris was releasing SwiftUI tutorials. For whatever reason, SwiftUI just appeals to my brain more.

I got totally lost doing the UI Kit tutorials when they hit delegates. It just felt too mechanical and no logic for me.

Anyway having a great time doing SwiftUI now.

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#2

welcome to the party!

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#3

Just finished the Recipe app, Module 2.

Still have the final challenge to complete, but I think I’m going to run through the entire module one more time just to get a better handle on some of the details first.

It’s funny it all makes sense while Chris is explaining it, but when I try to solve the later challenges I find myself getting tangled up. Eventually it gets solved, but I think that 2nd pass will help me grasp the sticking points and not feel like I’m just copying the tutorials.

#4

I know right! It all gets jumbled up in your head or you miss one tiny syntax and the whole thing goes berserk lol

Debugging can be super frustrating but it does feel great to figure it out

Yesterday I was working on a table view and having some issues with bugs, fix one and another pops up like 5 times in a row. I ended up just closing the laptop and walking away. Then a few hours later I opened it back up, hit run and it magically worked!! Lol I have no idea what happened

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#5

LOL I made a few successful apps a few years back in coaco touch. Didn’t think I would be making any more because of how much of a pain it was back then.

I’m giving it another go with SwiftUI, it almost feels like making apps out of HTML/PHP still trying to get a firm grasp on MVVM. SwiftUI is totally different.

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#6

Every day you learn something new, it’s a good day I reckon.

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#7

I went through the second module a second time, doing all the challenges.
Absolutely worth doing for me, funny how memory works with this sort of stuff. Some modules felt like I’d never seen them before. I think some of the challenges may have taken longer, because I understood the questions better the 2nd time, and tried to solve them with learning in mind rather than just getting them done.

The GitHub module was a quickie, so did that and up to lesson 3 in Module 4 this week.

The challenge was trickier than expected, in part because I wanted to use some of the MVVM concepts. Where the syntax still trips me up. Had a screen fulll of error messages at multiple points, but managed to break it down, and had one of those flashes hours after giving up on incorporating MVVM, but went right back and solved it in 5 minutes once I’d realized my syntax error.

#8

Working through Module 4 now. Hit the 7th challenge, after feeling good up to then. But that challenge really spun out of control for me, tried to make it way too complicated, and wound up thinking there’s got to be a better way.
I kind of gave up this time, and turned to the solution early. I need to circle back around to this one.

Things I learned, you don’t always need to use MVVM, Color is a variable type.

#9

Just finished the 8th challenge, and thankfully it redeemed the last one. This may have been one of the most satisfying results so far.

I set it up to create random gradients, and it’s just really cool to see them displayed, almost like modern art.

#10

Finished SwiftUI module 4.

I’m missing not having any challenges for sure. :frowning:

I tried to add a couple of features to the Recipe App. Add the highlights to the list view and if the recipe is featured or not, with a star image that’s filled if it is and empty if not.

That was no problem, but then I tried to see if I could actually set the image to be featured from the list view or detail view.

Deffo beyond my pat grade right now, I only caused the app to crash no matter the variation I tried. I’m sure it’s doable, but hope the next module will give me the skills to do it.

Still, it always feels really worthwhile to mess around under the hood.

I think that a possible easy way for CWC to add challenges is just giving bonus feature assignments like this. Helps to understand the code much more than just coping lessons, where I find it hard to have the same level of engagement as building something on my own.

#11

Just wrapped up Module 5.

Since no new challenges are coming out, I did a first pass of just watching the videos, and on the second pass actually built the module along with Chris.

Somewhere during that, the Final Challenge for module 4 came out, and I decided best to circle back after finishing Module 5 first.

And in that time, the big bug was discovered.

Now just starting to circle back to the Module 4 Final Challenge, and the good thing is even though I’m taking my time with it, it feels ‘easy’ compared to Modlue 5.

I think the biggest take home on that is do your best not to design anything that needs to be built like Module 5! It wasn’t especially hard, but felt convoluted and ripe for errors.

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#12

I took a detour after getting tripped up with the solution to the SwiftUI Fundamentals Learning App final challenge, where some Swift syntax was used that through me for a loop. (haha)

So after doing a couple of other courses, seeing things done differently, I feel way more comfortable to get back to the final City Sights app, and definitely notice the detour was worth it. I just feel more engaged, and less like it’s just copying. Oddly the other course was so over my head in some places that things feel way more accessible here, and it’s great.

Learning this stuff is a journey, and sometimes when one road feels closed, it’s god to try another.

#13

Moving right along in SwiftUI Fundamentals Module 6.
Just got the map up and running, and the annotations working.

After module 5 I was expecting this to feel like more of a grind, especially with it getting into UIKit implementation, but it’s been a breeze. Probably the project I’ve enjoyed the most to work on so far in fact.