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After reading those recent financial/earnings from iOS game developers on HN, I'd be very wary of dropping 4,500$ for a 12 week course.
I'm a full time iOS dev that taught myself. I spent a ton of time working through my struggles via StackOverflow and piece working online tutorials. Very cool to see what you were able to build in only 12 weeks. Why did you choose this, instead of learning yourself. Didn't you still have to do all the work to learn even with the program?
I put in hundreds of hours beyond regular class time. And yes, definitely working through struggles on StackOverflow and online tutorials.
I chose this because, for me, it's a lot easier to sit back and watch TV or play around without the financial, time, and personal commitment of signing up for a class. I had somewhere to be. My wife and kids knew I had somewhere to be. So it was a full family commitment that made it work.
After reading those recent financial/earnings from iOS game developers on HN, I'd be very wary of dropping 4,500$ for a 12 week course.
Also, a senior iOS developer can make anywhere from $90-150k in even a low paying market like Utah. I don't even know what the market is in places like New York and California.
Needless to say, what you get for your $4500 is a lot more than just indie game revenue. It's a life changing experience to learn to write iOS apps.
After reading those recent financial/earnings from iOS game developers on HN, I'd be very wary of dropping 4,500$ for a 12 week course.
But the reality is that even junior developers are making very good money working contract or full-time.
$4500 is less than a semester of required classes at University. And it was a good way to dive in.
Edit: being down voted because of an opinion? Hey, I want to middle school with Caleb! On a more related note: It's exciting to see others realize how simple and painless Apple has made iOS dev. It still takes logical chops and a keen eye to make something worthwhile, but the bridge between non-developer and developer is getting shorter and shorter. The new iOS 8 kits will shorten that gap even more. Still, as a deve…
I may be bucking the 'everything will be mobile first/mobile only' mindset, but I see the 'successful' apps as those that fit in a larger ecosystem of functionality. For many users, the primary/only point of contact with a system may be the mobile app, but there will be other endpoints of the system with more traditional web interfaces or even other endpoints which will provide other value to other parties.
Yes, the instagrams and yo and such are 'successful', but ultimately, they tend to prove the exception to the rule, I think. Outside of gaming, I'd expect most apps to have other functionality that can be processed and accessed with in other ways beyond solely a mobile interface.
To that end, the mobile app experience doesn't necessarily have to be 'high-caliber' over and above all the other competition, as long as the rest of the supporting functionality provides enough value.
I may entirely wrong though...
Edit: being down voted because of an opinion? Hey, I want to middle school with Caleb! On a more related note: It's exciting to see others realize how simple and painless Apple has made iOS dev. It still takes logical chops and a keen eye to make something worthwhile, but the bridge between non-developer and developer is getting shorter and shorter. The new iOS 8 kits will shorten that gap even more. Still, as a deve…
Apple has definitely made great tools in helping newbies learn. There's still room to improve, and iOS 8 tools are a huge help.
I agree with you. The iOS market is maturing. It's no longer a gold-rush of simple one-off apps. The quality needs to be there. So whether that means putting in years as an indie, or working in teams to build high-quality stuff faster, that's what it's going to require to be successful now.
"non-technical".
I think I addressed this in the post itself. >So to say I’m entirely non-technical may be unfair. It just depends on the context. Neighborhood barbecue? Technical. Startup Weekend? Non-technical. Where does the HN crowd fit on that spectrum? My guess is most people here would still consider me non-technical, even with what I've built so far.
Edit: being down voted because of an opinion? Hey, I want to middle school with Caleb! On a more related note: It's exciting to see others realize how simple and painless Apple has made iOS dev. It still takes logical chops and a keen eye to make something worthwhile, but the bridge between non-developer and developer is getting shorter and shorter. The new iOS 8 kits will shorten that gap even more. Still, as a deve…
While Apple has built such easy to use tools that anyone can build apps, the app store has been turning into a quagmire of crap. I really hope the structure of App stores go through a dramatic change soon.
After reading those recent financial/earnings from iOS game developers on HN, I'd be very wary of dropping 4,500$ for a 12 week course.
Being an indie game developer is very different from being a contract iOS developer. I can't imagine a full-time iOS developer being paid less than a Jr. High teacher + $4,500. I'm looking for one now, albeit with a little more experience than Caleb, and could very well end up paying six figures (in Utah).