Hack Tonight

Get good at iPhone app development

marco:

I keep getting emails from people who want me to develop iPhone apps for them. The very few people I know who have this ability are booked solid for the indefinite future. There’s a big market here for developers.

If you’re looking to learn a new programming language and platform, and you’re at least moderately familiar with C, I strongly suggest that you look into this.

Requirements:

• You really need to know C (not C++). Some may disagree, but it would really help. If all of your previous experience is in dynamic languages like PHP or Ruby, Objective-C is really going to hurt.
• You need to be patient and dedicated. This is a very hostile platform to enter as a newbie because community and documentation are thin, and a lot of functionality in Xcode and Interface Builder is unintuitive. (Then there’s this problem.)
• You need a ruthless attention to detail and a sense for what makes a good interface.

Rewards:

• It’s a very cool platform.
• You’ll learn a lot.
• Once you get past the oddities and ugly syntax, you can appreciate some of the great design decisions and conventions in Cocoa and apply them to your other programming work.
• People are paying for good apps. As in, they’re giving you money in exchange for software. This is a very foreign and welcome concept to web people accustomed to whoring out and begging for traffic to survive on a $1 CPM.
• You don’t have to handle promotion or payment processing.
• You can make a living on it as an individual.
• You don’t need funding.
• It’s a very young market, so most of the competition isn’t very good and there are a lot of unfilled holes.
• The Apple Store employees in the Westchester mall will treat you like a celebrity and want to take pictures with you. (Really.)

Trust me, it’s worth it if you can do it.