Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

CS193p: Developing Apps for iOS

cs193p.sites.stanford.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 174 posts

Re: CS193p: Developing Apps for iOS

#31

Post by dimmke »

newbie578 wrote: post #7

Off topic, but looking at the curriculum of the course and the more I read about native development, the more I love Flutter. There are so many barriers to entry for native development, to develop and publish a simple app is such a complex procedure that I respect anyone even trying to go Native first without any prior knowledge. Flutter on the other hand, is a pure joy. Almost anything you need UI-wise is prepared,…

I agree - native development is bad. I had an iPhone app that I built using native Apple stuff and it was miserable. And the whole time you're struggling with their buggy UI framework you can't even take solace in that you're learning useful skills because it's all specific to Apple development. From the programming language to the frameworks/APIs you use.

It's so domain specific that IMO it's not worth trying to do that kind of work unless it's your main career. I ended up taking the app I had built down because I kept getting support requests for bugs I didn't know how to fix and the idea of going into the code to add more features filled me with a sense of dread. The app was doing somewhat well too, it had about 1000 DAU.

I built another app for the CDC in React Native, which has its own foibles but is overall much easier. I'm not sure how successful Flutter will be overall because you can't leverage outside skills and you have to learn a different language.

Re: CS193p: Developing Apps for iOS

#32

Post by nezaj »

newbie578 wrote: post #7

Off topic, but looking at the curriculum of the course and the more I read about native development, the more I love Flutter. There are so many barriers to entry for native development, to develop and publish a simple app is such a complex procedure that I respect anyone even trying to go Native first without any prior knowledge. Flutter on the other hand, is a pure joy. Almost anything you need UI-wise is prepared,…

FWIW, my buddy and I built and launched a simple iOS app (Export Health!) in the App Store in two weeks using SwiftUI. The whole app is basically one file and under 1MB including all the iOS extras. Both of us are professional engineers but only had minor exposure to iOS before building this app.

A few years back I built internal apps at work using React Native. Warts aside, it was a great dev experience and was able to re-use code 100%. However, having to ensure all was well with both iOS and Android (and indeed sometimes there were edge cases) slowed me down.

SwiftUI and the Combine framework provides a similar dev experience I felt using React Native. Moreover, app previews in XCode make it straightforward to paint different application states and iOS settings. Building for one platform also reduces the quality check surface, allowing you to spend more time focusing on product.

If cross platform is a necessity from the onset (e.g. internal app for work where all employees need access but may have different phones) then starting with non-native makes sense. However I personally recommend anyone looking to build a product as an app to focus on iOS first and use SwiftUI. I reckon you will move faster, have a smaller code base, and a better app. All of which are conducive to finding PMF if you intend to make a business out of your product

Re: CS193p: Developing Apps for iOS

#33

Post by JCharante »

kardos wrote: post #29

Is it weird that a /university/ is offering this course on how to work with a specific commercial product? Shouldn't this be the domain of Apple itself or a company that specialises in training?

My university has been offering seminars on how to use Matlab for years. They also offer a course on getting you proficient in SolidWorks. I get your point that it should be offered by a company that specializes in training, but it's nice when universities go beyond pure theoretical concepts and teach things that can be used for side-projects.

Re: CS193p: Developing Apps for iOS

#34

Post by mcraiha »

hamburglar wrote: post #25
LegitShady wrote: post #21

I'm assuming you need a Mac computer to develop ios applications? I have an iphone and ipad but I won't purchase their computers.

You can now do it on AWS MacOS instances

But in long run it is cheaper to buy used Mac Mini for XCode builds.

Re: CS193p: Developing Apps for iOS

#35

Post by randomifcpfan »

rudedogg wrote: post #18
randomifcpfan wrote: post #5

Old news? These excellent videos have been posted on Stanford’s YouTube channel for 8 months: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpGHT1n4-mAtTj9oywMWoBx0d...

Yeah these have always been free. I got excited thinking maybe it was a more recent class being published, but it’s not. Anyway, they’re good!

Oh, I see. The new news is that the course materials other than the videos have now been posted.

Re: CS193p: Developing Apps for iOS

#36

Post by [deleted] »

izacus wrote: post #13
elliekelly wrote: post #9

Since this is posted here I'll ask a question that has been bugging me for the last year: Who does the captions on these YouTube videos? Is it automated? I ask because every CS193p video starts with the same opening scene/music and the caption describing the music is different on every single one . Is this an auto-caption algorithm just getting it wrong? Or is there a person having fun behind the scenes waiting for s…

The YT automatic captions are marked as such and are usually easily distinguishable because the subtitles appear word-by-word instead of whole lines at once. My guess is that those are manual.

[deleted]

Re: CS193p: Developing Apps for iOS

#37

Post by dont__panic »

divtiwari wrote: post #26

Is there an Android equivalent of such a course? CS193A doesn't have official videos and resources like this one. Any other university course?

Also interested in this. I've explored a few Android courses, but most online content I've tried so far hasn't really given me the "college lecture" vibe that I'm looking for.

Re: CS193p: Developing Apps for iOS

#38

Post by bredren »

kardos wrote: post #29

Is it weird that a /university/ is offering this course on how to work with a specific commercial product? Shouldn't this be the domain of Apple itself or a company that specialises in training?

Apple has a lot of programming related courses and tools. The docs, and their relative quality has been discussed a lot here.

But in general universities have been teaching the tools of specific industries for a long time. Sometimes entire departments or buildings are sponsored by specific companies or programs underwritten as “industry-academic partnerships” when the research aims are aligned with strategic goals of a particular company.

For example, Oregon State University’s College of Forestry has a Tallwood Design Institute:

“Its core tenets are the importance of industry collaboration, through outreach, education and feedback from professionals.”

So, teaching a particular framework may be more explicit, but it isn’t unusual activity.

http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/collegeofforestry/2019/04/09/ta...

Re: CS193p: Developing Apps for iOS

#40

Post by abawany »

LolWolf wrote: post #27
elliekelly wrote: post #9

Since this is posted here I'll ask a question that has been bugging me for the last year: Who does the captions on these YouTube videos? Is it automated? I ask because every CS193p video starts with the same opening scene/music and the caption describing the music is different on every single one . Is this an auto-caption algorithm just getting it wrong? Or is there a person having fun behind the scenes waiting for s…

Oh, these are (mostly?) manual (often done by students working with SCPD, if I recall correctly). Any student can sign up and record for a class after some basic training, which I think can also include CC'ing some parts of it. It is definitely someone just having a bit of fun :)

I think you are right - people sometimes have too much fun with subtitles: videos from https://www.youtube.com/technologyconnections typically subtitle the jazz at the end of the videos with a relevant adjective (e.g. 'cool jazz' or something for a video on HVAC operations.)
Post reply on HN