When to start your own projects

Hey guys quick question - when does it make sense to stop the courses and start googling things/going to stack overflow to work on your own projects?

More Context here:

So I went through the “War” card game app. Then I did a few more lessons in the 90 day course and started building my own weather app (front end done) next I need to learn API’s in hopes of starting to work on my dream app I always wanted to build after. I heard that working on your own projects is the best way to go…but am getting stuck or feel that I’m just guessing A LOT…not enough fundamentals maybe? idk

I would go through the entire 90 days course, and then build your own app!!

You should know / be familiar with fetching data from an API, and then you’ll have a really good base for how to put an app together yourself

But also you don’t have to make something revolutionary to start. I made a trivia game as my first app (not following a tutorial)

And that taught me a lot!

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Thank you Mike, did you ever create extra apps during the course? - for instance I followed the War Card tutorial and passed the quizzes, did the exercises, etc, but if you asked me to build it from scratch i’d find it difficult and wouldn’t be able to…

What’s your advice here?

The sooner I can build my weather app the sooner I can build my geo-app idea.

Or is programming all about struggling through google search while learning things? lol

You can do this haha but sometimes can be inefficient when you don’t know what to search for

This is where I’d recommend looking at the quizzes that accommodate the lessons. Because it’s looking at the concept in isolation. And understand what the concept is, that was applied in the war card game. I would recommend trying to build the apps again, like the war card game.

But don’t follow the tutorial and try to google what parts you’re struggling with

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Got it, I like that! do it once with tutorials and then the second time with google.

Hey Mike I did it! https://twitter.com/vladgives/status/1634568971763748865

Weather app made from scratch.

Should I jump into a weather app now? Or just get back on the code with Chris course?

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What’s your goal with learning iOS development? To get a job, or just for fun?

I think you are trying to take a shortcut here. I suggest you complete the 90 day course. In order to build a geo-app as suggested. You will need to learn how frontend, Figma(wireframing), backend(CRUD routes), Rest APIS, Swift Package managers, Firebase Auth, databases, App Architecture via navigation layouts, System design, and most importantly how to deploy servers(frontend/backend) on EC2 Instances via AWS or equivalent.

For context I am currently a professional Full-Stack developer currently working in the field, but came here to learning swift/swiftUI to improve my mobile app skills. I come from a flutter/react native background and so far Swift/SwiftUI has been amazing to work with!

Good luck on your journey!

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This is not needed as a beginner! You can learn it, if you ever want to make your own API, but most of the time, that’s not necessary. A backend like Firebase is sufficient to get started!

Unlike full stack development where you need to learn many technologies and tech stacks. With iOS development you only need Swift. Because you can even learn CloudKit and CoreData. Which don’t require eCute dive knowledge of deployment

sent you an email. My goal isn’t to get a job, but to be good enough to prototype MVP’s for future startups.

I’m an entrepreneur who owns a marketing agency and I figure coding would be a great skillset for my startup endeavors.

IS this more fun or job? I’d put it more on fun because even if I can never learn to code it won’t stop me from starting more businesses in the future.

PS sent you an email :slight_smile:

sounds like what you’re saying is I basically am over emphasizing one element of coding and it’s holding me back from learning vs. If I just focus on mastering the 90 day course then Chris will eventually teach about API’s and when I do get to them I’ll be able to glide through smoother.

Am I right here? :slight_smile:

which email did you use? Also what is yours (you can DM me that) so I can try to find it

Basically just go through the 90 days course. Even if you don’t fully understand everything (which is totally fine!! It’s a lot of info), you ‘ll have exposure to different topics, which can help you understand what to build.

Many stuff they mentioned is useful to know, but NOT essential to just get started

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That is wonderful to hear. Maybe I am overthinking it but I am new to swift so still learning how it all works. I look forward to learning more about being able to do all that within the apple iOS ecosystem :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:.

The biggest advantage, but also disadvantage of iOS development is Apple controlling everything!

The advantage, it’s all Apple, you can just learn Swift and that’s the only language you need to do iOS dev, and have your own backend with their frameworks Core Data and CloudKit.

The disadvantage, is if you want to do something slightly outside of what they allow, it can be more difficult. For example there’s only one IDE (which again is great for beginners! There’s only one option), the disadvantage, is there’s no competition. JetBrains was making one called AppCode, but they’ve recently sunset that after about 10 years! So Xcode is literally the only option for iOS dev

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