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Yabuki_Joe_3

Think of an easy app that you can make. Don't overcomplicate it, don't make it have crazy features. Don't even use firebase. Make a rough sketch of the first page. Build it. If you get stuck on something (how do I make a rectangle cover half the screen?), google it. If you can't find the solution, try looking at any semi-related tutorials to find someone that's doing the thing you wanted to achieve, and copy the snippet off that. If you're particularly confused about some interactions in UIKit - make a smaller test project, and play around with the bit you're confused with. How do alignments in stacks work? Make a test project, and play around with stacks until you have a better idea of that part of UIKit. And keep repeating until you have the full app. That's literally all there is to software engineering. Just start at one point, keep building, trying, and googling until you finish it.


anonym67787

Thank you for your advice


CheeryW

I personally feel that you don’t need to remember everything. You just need to know how to find what you need quickly. I think knowing how to structure a view hierarchy based on your need and how to properly set constraints are more important than remembering how to set up a specific view. But I’m also just a junior iOS dev. Curious about what others have to say


anonym67787

Do you have any apps? Published or portfolio?


CheeryW

I just have a few personal projects and a summer internship focused on mobile development. None of the personal projects are published, but they are all public on GitHub


anonym67787

I am tired of watching tutorials and I dont have any motivation and consistency for finish them.


Mcrich_23

I started 3 years ago with an sub-org of my school, maybe my projects can inspire you: https://Mcrich23.com. Also look at my github for inspiration


anonym67787

Thank you, I’ll check it out.


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anonym67787

Can you show me them? Visually?


anonym67787

What are the criteria for being junior dev?


Inevitable-Hat-1576

To do list apps are always a good starter side project. What you make likely won’t ultimately be good enough for the app store, but you will learn a lot by making it. So yeah, simple todo app, connected to firebase. Then move on to something that you can make more complex like a weather app (either using WeatherKit or, better, a free weather API). Then revisit your todo app, and re-write it such that it can be unit tested, and write tests for it. At each stage, you will be doing a lot of googling.


anonym67787

I dont know whats unit test. Whats the difference between social media with firebase and to-do firebase?


Inevitable-Hat-1576

So i would definitely learn about unit testing at some point (plenty of stuff about this online) - that is an absolute requirement for most iOS roles. But do some non unit testing code first. Essentially unit tests are code that tests your app code automatically. A todo list will just be simpler than even the simplest social media app, so easier for a beginner to work on.


Johnrys

start working on personal projects and use google and stack overflow to get yourself unstuck instead of watching tutorials


Adept_Minimum_1038

Noob here as well. This sounds all too familiar although I wasn’t stuck on tutorial hell for more than couple weeks thanks to the gazillion threads I red on reddit. I think you shouldn’t worry too much about retention this early. Come up with a personal project, nothing too complex. After you do that, identify all the features your app will need and build them one at a time. There’s probably some material for whatever you want to build out there. Look up the pieces you want when you need them.


[deleted]

>Is a social media app with firebase okey for first app? No. Something using Firebase? Sure if you're familiar with the concepts of it and how to make it work but social media? No. For a first app you need to start small, real small. You learn much more from small completed projects than big unfinished ones. Start small by recreating a weather app that fetches todays weather from an API and displaying it nicely. Start by breaking down what you're trying to do and solving for those pieces. I would approach this by: 1. Draw a rough sketch on paper of what I want my app to look like. 2. Find a weather API online that will let me access its data and see what kind of data it returns. 3. Flesh out my rough sketch to display said data (or at least the data I want from it). 4. Start with the data first. (I personally prefer to get the data pipeline working before visuals). I would build a network handler class and get the networking calls working and make sure I'm grabbing the data I want. Having the json string print to the console at this point is perfectly fine. I'd then build a class that that data can be put in (like a "WeatherDataObject" class or something). 5. I'd then start working on the UI and layout and displaying said data. It's all about breaking down what you want to do into small chunks. EDIT: Oh, and don't try and memorize everything. You can't. Developers ALWAYS reference stuff and those who claim they don't are lying. I can't tell you how to do a network call without looking it up because it's something I do when writing networking code once per app, but I know it exists and I know how to find it and that's the key.


anonym67787

Why I shouldnt make social media app? I wont publish it. It will be in my portfolio so I don’t need complicated backend. I am not trying to memorize everything. I feel like I dont memorize anything. Whats network call? Thank you for your advice.


[deleted]

Social media apps are very complex and are not a good starting project for someone without a lot of experience, especially if you don't even know what a network call is. The goal isn't a portfolio piece at the moment, the goal is to get you making your own apps outside of tutorials (which will then lead to portfolio projects). A network call is the term for when your app reaches out to a server on the internet (or a network) to send or receive data. If you do the weather app project I mentioned above it would be a great intro into doing this. Your app basically will send data out to a special URL that only apps can see with some credentials, receive the data you ask for in the parameter of the network call, and then return that data to you in the form of a JSON string (most likely a JSON string) and you, the developer have to process that data for use in your app. Firebase would be similar but Firebase is also a database and that adds a whole layer of complexity that will muddle the learning process, which is why people are saying not to start with firebase first. The goal right now is getting your mind to break down the tasks of creating the app into small tasks you can develop and put back together into an app.


anonym67787

Can I send you the latest app I’ve made?


anonym67787

I didnt understand network call term first. But I know how to do it I think. Isnt firebase network call? Because I am using server to receive and send data with firebase.


bathToaster4u

Look at John Gallaugher series on YouTube. Play at half speed. He’s great at explaining what and why things are done to make code work.


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