How To Make iPhone Apps With No Programming Experience

Updated: Jan 6, 2015 This is my article series to teach people how to build iPhone and iPad applications who have no programming experience. My focus is to explain things in simple, plain English and get people started making their own apps. Rather than trying to teach everything I learned about Computer Science in University or every last aspect of programming, I’ll distill it into what you need. My approach will be to slowly introduce concepts as you need them, rather than trying to equip you with everything up front only to overwhelm you! It’s really not that far fetched as long as you have the desire to learn and the persistence to keep at it and get better! Programming can be self-taught and yes, you can start your own career in software development even if you don’t have a formal background. It’s probably the single greatest thing I love about my field; that merit is based on your achievements and hard work rather than seniority or experience (as in the case of a surgeon for example). Swift or Objective-C? Apple recently released a new programming language called Swift for developing iPhone apps. Previously, it was Objective-C that people had to learn in order to build apps. This raised a common question from beginners on which language they should learn. The good news is that this resource covers both Swift and Objective-C languages! However, if you’re starting from scratch with no programming experience, I’d highly recommend that you learn Swift because it’s easier to learn for beginners. The biggest point of failure for beginners is giving up before they pass “the hump”. The hump is what i like to call that point where it turns from frustrating to fun. It’s kinda like that point where you’re riding your bike without training wheels for the first time and you’re really wobbly, but not falling! Then it’s just fun from there. With Objective-C, that hump is high because the code contains a lot more weird characters/symbols and it’s less forgiving. Beginners tend to give up before it “clicks” for them. Swift is more natural to both read/write and so it’s a lower barrier to entry. My advice would be to start with Swift, pass “the hump” and then if Objective-C is something that you need, you’ll have the confidence to learn it and not give up. With that said, here are the Swift tutorials for How To Make An App With No Programming Experience using Xcode 6 and iOS 8. Farther below the page is the Objective-C crash course which uses Xcode 5. How To Make an App Module 1: Basics In this module, you’ll get an orientation of the development environment, a tiny taste of Swift code and participate in building your very first app! iOS Development Tools and Materials 1. Introduction to the tools and materials An orientation of the tools and resources used for iOS development. iOS Development Tools and Materials 2. Playgrounds and getting your feet wet An unintimidating dabbling into Swift code! iOS Development Tools and Materials 3. Xcode 6 tutorial and tour Get acquainted with the development environment where you’ll bring your idea to life! iOS Development Tools and Materials 4. The anatomy of an iPhone app How’s an app put together? We break it down into the major components. iOS Development Tools and Materials 5. Your first Swift app Create your first ceremonious “Hello World” app! Module 2: The art of war In Module 2, you’ll dive right into creating a simple version of the card game, War. Xcode 6 Auto Layout 6. Creating the user interface – Auto layout In this lesson, you’ll see how easy it is to visually create your app interface. Swift Basics 7. Basic building blocks of Swift programming Learn about object oriented programming, classes, objects, methods and properties. Swift Subclassing and UIKit 8. More Swift concepts and UIKit In this lesson, we go through more Swift programming basics and learn about what UIKit is. Swift IBOutlet Properties 9. Hooking it all up – Swift IBOutlet properties Now we’re ready to learn how to expose the user interface elements so you can manipulate them with code. Swift IBActions and Methods 10. Handling button taps – Methods We’ll go through how to capture a tap on a button so that you can respond to it! Xcode 6 Asset Library 11. Adding and displaying images in your app Learn how to add images to your Xcode 6 project and display them in your app. You’ll also learn about various images sizes that you need for retina and high resolution displays. Download the images used in this video here. Card images by Charles Esquiaqui licensed under Creative Commons. Swift randomizing numbers 12. Getting a random number and randomizing the cards War is a game of chance, so we’ll need to know how to generate random numbers. In this lesson, we also learn how to change the card images based on the randomly generated numbers. Swift Arrays 13. Using Arrays to manage the card images This lesson introduces Arrays. It shows you how to use this collection class to improve the way we display the card images. For reference: Apple’s Swift Programming Language Guide Swift IF statements 14. Determining a winner – IF statements Implement the simple game logic in code to determine a winner. Styling and variable scoping 15. Styling and keeping score By implementing the score keeping, we’ll learn the importance of understanding scope. We’ll also add additional graphics to liven the app up! Download the graphics or source code.