Week 3: Preparation

Learning the Ways of iOS Development

Before we can start developing apps in iOS, we must learn the ins and outs. We have spent many hours learning the basic and advance features of the programming languages that power apps in iOS: Objective-C and Swift, both derivatives of C. Our main source used for learning these languages was through tutorials on Lynda. We followed along the tutorials while experimenting with the concepts explained in the videos.

Apple Foundations

Next we dived into the world of Xcode and Apple frameworks. Xcode is Apples Integrated Development Environment(IDE). In Xcode we have access to the iOS SDK, this is where we can begin developing our app. Apple provides a set frameworks and foundational material for developing apps in iOS. These are essential to understand in order to develop any app in iOS. After following the tutorials on Lynda and going through Apple documentation and guides, we found that learning the foundations of iOS to be challenging. However, the more we experiment with it, the less intimidating it seems.

Setting Up the Work Flow

For our work environment, we have gathered and setup a few tools for efficiency, safety, compatibility, and collaboration. We believe that these tools will give us everything we need to build the app to the best of our abilities

From left to right(above image), skipping over the first 5 icons:

Dash - This app gathers documentation for many popular technologies. We will use this as quick reference for many of the functionalities of these technologies. 

Pocket  - A good app for saving and viewing links and pages across platforms

Github - A git version control graphical user interface. We use this to keep control over different versions of our app, testing and experimenting, and backing up any version or changes made to the app. 

Clear - A simple minimalist list making app. 

Quiver - A notebook for programmers. We will use this to share notes of changes, notes on  proposals or ideas, and notes on suggested edits. 

Xcode - The main IDE for developing iOS and OS X applications.

Skitch - An image annotator and editor

Sketch 3 - A UI/UX  design environment. We will use this to develop design proposals for the app