iMAndroid

Start Developing a Mobile App

Every technology blog/website is incomplete without a word on mobiles, new portable communications devices. Its very apparent how our small portables are taking over desktops for an average end user. iPhone 3.0 OS update is making more headlines than Leopard 10.5.6 or “snow”. Analysts say Android’s gonna lead in the next 2-3 years. Think about the potential or developer reach when that happens!

iPhone and the AppStore injected some fresh oxygen into dying develper interest in the mobile market. Not just that, we saw a number of newbees jumping into it too. This article will be particularly aimed at those newbies! Things they should know before they start working on their killer mobile application ( And for those that are still confused about writing or hiring)

Your journey will be a lot more challenging if you’ve had no prior programming experience. You’ll need to ask alot of questions and test yourself if your willing to go all the way. The motivation is obviously the dough its gonna generate but quality application thats missing is what’ll clear your path to success. In short, you need an idea thats worth putting all that effort into. Im sure there are plenty as I’ve discovered .
If your already are aware of certain programming experience, you probably downloaded the SDKs!

Lets get started on things you’ve got to know!

Writing code is, frankly, not everyone’s cup of tea.
“Software Developer Kits” is where the former statement goes bananas. SDK makes all the difference for a guy with no programming experience in his early 30s to make a resonably good app. On the other hand, SDKs can make some high level assembly code writers go nuts and make them feel a little less lamer.

TERMINOLOGY: A basic understanding of the terminology is absolutely necessary. There are no two ways about it. Cocoa objective-C (iPhone SDK language) made me feel like an @$$. For years, what I referred to as functions or procedures or procs are called “methods” in cocoa. And it took me a while to get it. There are some commonalities while retaining their individual characteristics of different SDKs.

SYNTAX: Your next step, Syntax! Syntax is pretty troubling, irritating to say the least. If your new to it! Its quite frustrating me because you know how that piece of code works and what its doing, but you CANNOT replicate the Exact on your own. Why so? We’ll its syntax.
Take this for example..
I’m used to

function LearnJava(bookname);
called as LearnJava(‘Homer’);

procedure LearnPascal(bookname: string);
(void)learncplusplus(bookname *varchar);

And this is.. Objective C, what iPhones and Macs are all made of..

-(void) learnObjectiveC:(NSString *)bookname;
called as [learnObjectiveC iStillDontKnowWhatThisMeans];

Once you crossed this stage of basics. Your are now in a position to ask some intelligent questions. Those famous (less embarrassing) How To’s.
One practise that helped me was just reading stuff at development forums. There are alot of people asking questions. And alot of people who help. Read, Read and Read all those forum threads They’re invaluable.

SDK: Play around with it for sometime. Open basic projects and just keep making a hello world app until you know it inside out. All compilers work differently. Back in the day, Borland Cpp compiler was basic, while Visual Cpp was bloated?? No, VC++ was/is just as good, if only we knew how to play around with the “Compiler”.

I Highly recommend making your own sample apps. For example, learn how to Make a simple table application in Eclipse and/or Xcode. and save it. Master the superficial stuff the Interface Controls (Buttons, Text Fields, Tables ). I made a table first. saved it. Learned how to Add data to it. A week later I learned how to add a searchbar over the table.

Slow progress is always a good sign, It means, your spending alot more time on your foundation and any Construction man will tell you how important that is! These are some basic steps you ought to do without neglect. This is absolutely required knowledge, not wisdom .. (yet). Its a long way to go after this but very very less stressful and more excitement. Theres nothing like watching you app coming of age which is motivation enough to carry on..

I hope I helped get start some wana be programmers!
Anyone can CODE, but Not everyone’s good at it…

Next time, i’ll talk about Basic information about a chosen SDK.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 and is filed under Applications, Articals, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.