NYvoyager learns Swift

Journal
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I am a biomedical technician with a background in basic electronics. I’ve dabbled with arduino code and then thought it would be great if my coding could eventually net some kind of profound result. More than just a complex circuit on a breadboard. So I started to look into Swift as I am an avid fan of apple produccts and as a platform it seems to offer opportunity to create something I can distribute to the many Idevices out in the wild.
The journey began around March 2023: Starting with the App Swift Playgrounds. Apple says “anyone can learn Swift!”
Messing around with Arduino introduced the idea of declaring variables and constants. The similarities ended there.
I have been a subscriber of CWC+ for a few months. The site made me an offer I couldn’t refuse upto 8 months at a bargain price.

So here I am . Currenlty I am on lesson 8 of iOS foundations. Structures lesson was fun.
I’m not great at math though :cry:
But I have committed to putting in at least an hour a day. Unfortunately that usually means of at least 3 hours of sitting with the material due to problems with my attention span. I have to constatnly bring my focus back and keep my eyes on the prize. I’m 43 and live and work in Florida.
I won’t lie the material is complex and It may take several reiterations of the subjects for me to grasp something. As of right now, I have a workable knowledge of the syntax. OMG does Xcode complain, and sometimes with out cause. sometimes nothing is wrong and I have to just close it and restart it for a nagging complaint to go away. Wonder if others experience this or is this a fault of my installation?

Let greeting:String = “I’ll be seeking guidance, advice and mentorship here”

I have also recently posted on the Swift.org forums becuase they appear to have a mentorship program running for 2023. I would welcome a mentor.

8 years ago; a Biomedical Technician manager took me as a mentee, and he changed my life.
Today I know everything about hemodialysis and how to repair and maintain the systems patients rely on for life sustaining treatments. I would hope to one day find coding mentor. I think that is the best way to learn, find accountability and share successes

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@NYvoyager

Welcome to the community.

The truth is that coding is hard and it’s not for everyone. For many of us the learning path has been long but eventually things start to make sense and you remember things off by heart. Repetition is the key to success and by that I mean keep building App’s from scratch and you get better and better at it over time.

One thing to note about Xcode is that the compiler is running all the time so it checks your syntax as you type. Anyone who is slow at typing (I’m one of them at times) it will continually yell at you before you get a chance to finish the correct syntax. You get used to it and just sit there and say, “yeah yeah I know, just chill out machine”.

As for mentorship, in an ideal world we would all love to be able to get that kind of support. One of the best things you can do is get good at searching for answers both here (someone might have already asked the same question as you have) or on line. Google is your friend.

The other thing I always say is that there is no such thing as a stupid question. We all started at the ground floor knowing nothing about Swift, nothing about Xcode and we all struggled to make sense of it all. That’s absolutely normal. I struggled. Chris Ching would have struggled but look where he is now.

You can do this.

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Chris Parker is right.

We don’t have coding ability when we born to the world.
In face, we know nothing when we were the baby.

Just try your best to code, I believe we could be a very professional computer programmer!

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I enjoyed this, having little exposure to coding and havintg app idea, this makes it feel within reach. My studying continues, but I wanted to share this