I’ve started learning iOS programming. Objective-C seems very low level, but it’s alright as an older object oriented language. Learning the Apple frameworks seems to the be tricky part. There’s a lot for me to learn with using Xcode (since I don’t normally use IDEs) and frameworks like Cocoa Touch.
I spoke to someone recently who suggested skipping Objective-C and going directly to Swift. Or even a tool like PhoneGap. Personally, I side with Aaron Hillegass’ take:
I have three messages for these people:
- If you want to be an iOS developer, you will still need to know Objective-C.
- Objective-C is easier to learn than Swift. Once you know Objective-C,
- it will be easy to learn Swift.
To take a longer perspective on iOS, I want to build my foundation up from Objective-C to iOS. This is similar to how learning Ruby is critical for being a Rails developer.
With that said, I’m eager to get my hands dirty with iOS prototypes through different online courses.