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Ask HN: How to become an expert iOS developer? What are the steps?

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Ask HN: How to become an expert iOS developer? What are the steps?

#1
I want to be a contract mobile app developer! To stay in the tough market I knew I should become an expert, I can’t become an expert just by working on some projects. So I want to see the whole picture. And I do know the experts in HN will be kind enough to help me. Please mention links books or other materials/tools I should read, use or must have! Thanks and I hope this helps the iOS dev community!

Re: Ask HN: How to become an expert iOS developer? What are the steps?

#3
>I want to be a contract mobile app developer! >So I want to see the whole picture.

Wake up, son, this bubble burst in 2012! Serious answer is the market is too tough nowadays to make a living without an exceptional alignment of talent, networking and big luck.

Re: Ask HN: How to become an expert iOS developer? What are the steps?

#4
post #3

>I want to be a contract mobile app developer! >So I want to see the whole picture. Wake up, son, this bubble burst in 2012! Serious answer is the market is too tough nowadays to make a living without an exceptional alignment of talent, networking and big luck.

DrNuke thanks for the honest answer! This might sound dumb but can you mention the list of talents I must have to establish myself in the market? Thank you

Re: Ask HN: How to become an expert iOS developer? What are the steps?

#5
post #3

>I want to be a contract mobile app developer! >So I want to see the whole picture. Wake up, son, this bubble burst in 2012! Serious answer is the market is too tough nowadays to make a living without an exceptional alignment of talent, networking and big luck.

DrNuke thanks for the honest answer! This might sound dumb but can you mention the list of talents I must have to establish myself in the market? Thank you

Cheers! First of all, you need strong self-esteem to keep going without getting discouraged by the many and many and many rejections of any kind you will face along the road. Second, from a technical point of view it really depends on what you are going to work on (games, consumer apps, business apps, etc.) and what you are exactly willing to offer: programming, deployment, quality assurance, etc. Third, networking is the key: start by meeting like-minded people locally and work in team to build a portfolio until you get your first gig. Fourth, you are on HN and therefore smart enough to know that Google is your best friend to grow a skillset on your own, so just start with searching “ios mobile developer how to start” from past year and have a look at the first page of results. Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: How to become an expert iOS developer? What are the steps?

#6
Here's the steps to become highly informed in whatever technology:

1) Search through university course listings and youtube for introductory lectures on said subject and it's related subjects. Example, these basic design lectures, note all these lectures are open http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/uicourse/05863fall17/schedule.htm... or these Stanford iOS development lectures https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/developing-ios-11-apps-wi... or Github for curated lists of iOS resources https://github.com/search?q=iOS+resources

2) Go on some freelancer site or Craigslist and offer to make prototype iOS apps or just write your own hobby programs and release them as free software to gain experience/feedback.

3) Search Google Scholar for relevant things to your field/interests, like this Mobile Research Practical Guide and if you don't have access to a library or money use sci-hub http://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.2200/S00763ED1V01Y20170...

4) Find out core things in said technology you should care about and how to work around them, for example iOS: unpredictable variation in network quality, lowered trust and robustness of mobile elements, limitations on local resources imposed by weight and size constraints, and concern for battery power consumption.

5) Find more advanced courses that help with understanding core issues you've identified https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~15-821/ note all the required reading, again get the doi's and look them up at public library/sci-hub for free

6) For the whole picture see how you can write once, deploy everywhere ie: OCaml/ReasonML or webassembly https://jaredforsyth.com/posts/making-a-cross-platform-mobil... taking into account all the big picture things such as battery consuption and network unreliablity you identified in Step 4.

*edited to fix links

Re: Ask HN: How to become an expert iOS developer? What are the steps?

#7
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DrNuke thanks for the honest answer! This might sound dumb but can you mention the list of talents I must have to establish myself in the market? Thank you

Cheers! First of all, you need strong self-esteem to keep going without getting discouraged by the many and many and many rejections of any kind you will face along the road. Second, from a technical point of view it really depends on what you are going to work on (games, consumer apps, business apps, etc.) and what you are exactly willing to offer: programming, deployment, quality assurance, etc. Third, networking i…

Thanks DrNuke! And Thanks for the great advice. FYI I am not new to iOS development and I am an iOS developer with a decent experience. I am googling for many years sir! But I still need good materials that people went through already and I need their word for it, for E.g. the books offered by raywenderlich.com looks pretty promising but I’m not sure how informative or helpful it will be. So I hope the experts at HN can provide me and other iOS developers a direction to become an expert, the parts of iOS sdk we should master and the skills we should acquire to become the best.

Re: Ask HN: How to become an expert iOS developer? What are the steps?

#8

Here's the steps to become highly informed in whatever technology: 1) Search through university course listings and youtube for introductory lectures on said subject and it's related subjects. Example, these basic design lectures, note all these lectures are open http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/uicourse/05863fall17/schedule.htm... or these Stanford iOS development lectures https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/developing-ios…

Thank you very much! This is really informative.