Ask HN: Fastest and best way to learn iOS programming?

7 points·eibrahim··10 comments

I am an experienced programmer with experience across the board, node, .net, rails, js, python, etc... but for some reason i find iphone programming so freaking difficult and un-intuitive and i don't know where to start... I am currently doing the http://www.codeschool.com/ course.

Any other recommendations?

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If you are an experienced programmer, I would recommend just diving in and building something. You will get a lot of hands on experience dealing with the platform, and at the end of the process, you will have what should be a shippable app that you can point to as a sign of your competence as an iOS developer.

This is what I have always done when wanting to learn a new language/framework/etc and it has worked well for me thus far.

I think you are on the right track. I'm also a experienced programmer. After doing the courses on codeschool.com, I finally understood the concept of objective-c and now I'm capable of creating decent code with it.

http://www.appcoda.com/

They have a lot of good tutorials around practical features you'd expect to be in an iOS app.

You could try to leverage your experience in c#/.net by using Xamarin for iOS http://xamarin.com/monotouch .

If you can afford it, the Big Nerd Ranch iOS courses will send you on your way quickly, but at ~$4,000 USD they're pretty spendy.

Buy a book, follow its tutorials, and make your own app.

any book recommendations?

The big nerd ranch series, and "pushing the limits." Bonus points if you read blogs about iOS dev.

Also, read code on open source repositories on github and such.

Also, developing an app for someone else lets you focus on the technical side and out the creative aspect aside. Just make sure to always remain curious about how the system works.

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