NerdSummit 2017 Talk: Introduction to iOS Development through Apps

On March 18th, I’ll be giving a presentation to teach iOS development by looking at completed apps and customizing them.

If you are planning to attend and want help after the talk to set up your machine and get started on the exercises, here’s what you’ll need:

  1. To do the exercises, you need a Mac with Xcode 8.2+ installed. If you don’t have access to a Mac, I think we’ll have enough people with one and can pair you with someone.
  2. We’re going to be forking apps on GitHub, so having a GitHub account already would be good.
  3. You don’t need a device — we’ll be able to use the simulator for all of the examples, but if you want help getting apps on devices, sign up for a free Apple Developer account.

It’s a beginner talk, so anybody with an interest in programming will get something out of it. It will help if you have some programming experience (in any language).

Here’s the plan

  1. Basic Swift (enough to be able to read the apps)
  2. The MVC pattern as implemented in UIKit
  3. Interface Builder (connecting outlets and actions)
  4. Then, we’ll fork an app and make some customizations
  5. Based on the group’s questions, we’ll cover as much iOS Development and Swift as we need.

The idea is that the apps we’ll fork are generally useful apps that people might want a custom version of. All of the code is open-source, and you’ll be able to continue to develop them after the workshop if you wish and release them to the App Store.

I’ll introduce the apps in subsequent blog posts here (I have to make them).

There will be handouts so you can work on your own after the talk.