Devs - XCODE - advice pls :-)

TimmyO

So, say I wanted to learn xcode - are there any recommended training materials? The 'Yamaha Pacifica' of xcode material?

ta 

monquixote

What are you trying to achieve?

My top piece of advice would be don't use XCode it's the worst IDE ever.

Of course if you want to do IPhone development you don't have a great deal of choice.

olafgarten

monquixote said:

What are you trying to achieve?

My top piece of advice would be don't use XCode it's the worst IDE ever.

Of course if you want to do IPhone development you don't have a great deal of choice.

I agree it's really terrible, if you just want to learn coding in General, I'd start learning Java, using IntelliJ Idea, that's one of the best IDE's I've ever used 

monquixote

IntelliJ is great as an IDE, but for someone starting out with programming I'd recommend VS Code and a scripting language (Python, JS, Ruby). 

I'm recruiting for junior devs at the moment and the number of them who don't understand how anything works because they just rely on a code generating, hand holding IDE is amazing.

The other problem with XCode is your choices are Obj C, C++ and Swift none of which I'd recommend for a beginner. 

I'm not sure I'd choose Java as a first language as it's so verbose and has so much confusing ceremony. If you did want to go for a compiled language then Go is really simple and has great tooling.

TimmyO

I don't want to 'be a developer' - I want to have a go at iOS apps (I have a vague notion of something I think should exist lol) so I *think* that xcode is the only way ? 

monquixote

Not necessarily.

XCode is the obvious route, but you can also use Xamarin to write iOS apps in C# using Xamarin Studio, or if you know HTML/JS you can use various web app frameworks like Cordova or React Native.

If you do go with XCode then go with Swift. 

Learning XCode, iOS, programming and Swift in one go is a big ask though.

TimmyO

monquixote said:

Not necessarily.

XCode is the obvious route, but you can also use Xamarin to write iOS apps in C# using Xamarin Studio, or if you know HTML/JS you can use various web app frameworks like Cordova or React Native.

If you do go with XCode then go with Swift. 

Learning XCode, iOS, programming and Swift in one go is a big ask though.

I can't get this lot working : https://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/getting-started.html so maybe I'll stick to the duffer's route of xcode and Lynda.com ? :-) 

monquixote

I wouldn't suggest going the React Native route unless you are already comfortable with web development otherwise you've got a whole other stack of crap to learn.

TimmyO

ah. ok. Downloading Xamarin.

Although there does seem to be lots of lovely training material for the xcode/swift route available... 

bloodandtears

I use xamarin, I'm c# and javascript primarily so it was the obvious choice, Visual Studio is available for the mac now too so I will download that soon as I am using a mac.

The community is helpful, not as much so as xcode native obviously.

I will say there can be some synch issues between the IDE and its XCODE behind the scenes compilation but they are rare.

HTML5 is always a viable solution too..