If you do not know, you should not be afraid, but find out.
Ayn Rand “Atlas Shrugged”



Hello, my name is Igor Tomich and I am a lecturer on iOS development courses and co-founder of Master Up online courses. This is my first post on our corporate blog where I decided to share tips for new iOS developers. I started writing my first iOS application in early 2009, and in May 2012 I conducted my first development course on the same platform, and by that time I had enough “often repeated mistakes” and ways to solve them.

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Attentiveness

Probably the most rarely mentioned quality in such articles and the most common problem for novice developers. Mindfulness can save you a lot of time and make the process of gaining knowledge much more pleasant. Minor syntax errors, calling wrong methods, misunderstanding documentation, and other such errors take their roots in inattention. Do not rush, no one forces you to write the right code right away or instantly understand the documentation.
Learn to find information yourself
Learn how to use Google, search for documentation in Xcode or in third-party applications. Looking for answers on stackoverflow.com or on specialized sites. Entropy is growing and a person who is able to quickly find the necessary information will always have an advantage.

Visit the right resources

There is no time to read the secondary information, it is necessary to contact the original sources and the generators of the movement forward. Apple will always be a source of information on the platform, learn to read the documentation from developer.apple.com/ios . Read and watch quality content www.raywenderlich.com , nshipster.com , nsscreencast.com . Watch out for the activities and opinions of the “grands” such as Matt Thompson , Matt Gammell , John Gruber , Mike Ash Evan Doll. Find such information and the intensity of the information suits you personally.

See WWDC

Apple spends a lot of effort and finance trying to bring a deep understanding of various technologies through the annual Worldwide Developers Conference. Be sure to watch the video developer.apple.com/wwdc/videos , this is just a storehouse of correct and understandable information.

Practice not trying to immediately understand everything.

Quite often, in the early stages, it is difficult to thoroughly understand the platform. The theory is especially difficult to study if it is the first development platform. Understanding why “so right”, but this approach “not very” comes only with practice. Programming is like the ability to ride a bike, no matter how many times you are told and shown, you have to trite a certain number of hours.

Understand that errors are not unique

Very often, at the slightest deviation from the correct behavior, the novice developer falls into a stupor. The likelihood that someone has already encountered your problem is quite high. Look for the text of the error in google or stackoverflow. Try viewing issues on github in case of errors in third-party libraries. We are not unique, like our mistakes, use the “Internet experience” to quickly find answers.

Use Cocoapods

Do not write "bikes", most likely cocoapods.org already contains a library that solves your problem. In modern projects, the number of third-party components has long been more than a dozen, so the ability to work with package managers will be a big plus.

Read GitHub

View popular libraries on GitHub . Download and watch other people's projects. Now in open source many good and real applications are available. For example, projects Cheddar and InkPad .

Ask yourself questions

The best way to learn any platform is to understand philosophy and to be able to answer the question “why?”. iOS is a fairly holistic platform that takes its roots from NeXTSTEP. Try to “feel” the approach, solutions and logic in the frameworks.

Start a pet project

A good way to write motivated and gain experience in communicating with end users. Solve a problem that is interesting to you personally. I have a lot of examples when a small project “for myself” has become a good financial reward for a developer. This is our personal project of the shuttle bus and the training of two guys from our course.

There will never be enough time

You should immediately admit this to yourself, you just have to start learning and doing, otherwise there will always be reasons to postpone learning or writing your own project a little. Start small, but today.