Learning app development

Russinating

Russinating

Russinating

Soldato
Joined
27 Dec 2005
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Location
Bristol
I'm sorely tempted to learn app development and was just after a few pointers as to where to begin.

I studied computing at college but only touched on the abortion that is VB. I can code HTML/CSS reasonably well (I code from scratch in Notepad++ with a browser as a visual check) and know my way around Photoshop. My JS is weak as I've never had an extensive use for it. I've never coded in anything else.

Ideally I'd like to be able to produce well polished apps for both iOS and Android. Probably not games, but apps with more of a web feel to them (corporate apps, app versions of sites, social apps etc).

Trouble is that I'm right at the start; I don't even know what languages both OS's use. So right now I just need some decent basic guides and 'Hello world' type tutorials.

Any help appreciated :).
 
Forgot to add, I own an HTC and an iPad 2 if that helps/makes a difference in terms of actual development testing etc, and I run Windows 7.
 
Last edited:
You're best bet is to learn how to program, before you start to develop anything.
A lot of people on here say your should learn pearl first. I didn't do this personally, but it is a good place to start.
 
Russinating said:
Forgot to add, I own an HTC and an iPad 2 if that helps/makes a difference in terms of actual development testing etc, and I run Windows 7.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately for iOS development you need a Mac and XCode.* iOS applications are written in Objective-C on top of the Cocoa library and require a host of signatures (£99/yr) before you can even deploy to your own device, never mind submit to the app store.

Android uses Java** and desktop Java might be a good place to start learning how to code in general and for Android; otherwise you could jump straight in and start developing for Android. I don't believe there's any cost to deploying to your own Android device, but check for yourself first. There's also an emulator in the Android toolkit you can play around with.

Really though, I would recommend you might want to start off by developing "applications" using HTML5 + JavaScript. That way, the same "app" will run on both Android and iOS (and even Windows Phone 7) without any major issues***. Since you know HTML+CSS already, this is probably a decent place to start.

* If you jailbreak you can install the entire toolchain to your device and compile on there, but it's not worth it.
** Oracle are currently suing Google over this.
*** Screen resolution and general web-based incompatibilities notwithstanding.
 
Anything off this list is worth learning:

http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html

(Yes, even old VB which you strangely label an abortion despite it being one of the most commercially successful languages ever developed).

If you are a Windows guy then, as said, IOS development is probably not the best way to start as you'd need new kit and also need to learn a new OS as well as the IDE.

Why not try downloading the free Visual Studio Express and have a crack with C# or VB.NET (which is very different to VB).

Whichever language you choose, you'll also need to learn some flavour of SQL too (T-SQL, PL/SQL etc), they are all 'fairly' similar though so just learn one well.
 
mp3duck said:
You're best bet is to learn how to program, before you start to develop anything.
A lot of people on here say your should learn pearl first. I didn't do this personally, but it is a good place to start.
Click to expand...

I also forgot to add that I can code PHP okish and MySQL fairly weakly, but I have good grasp of the syntax grammar, just not every single one by memory.

Seems like Android is the way forward.

I've also heard of a few programs that you develop in which then outputs to both Android and iOS. Considering I'm not interested in games or complicated apps with sounds (I know this is one such restriction), would this be worth me looking into?
 
If you've got the skills with HTML/CSS then I would focus on looking at javascript first. Web apps are moving forward fairly quickly and going by what you would like to develop it's a much easier step.

Check out Phonegap as this will allow you to hook on to native APIs for hardware controls and features.

If you take this route also bare in mind that HTML5 isn't finalised yet and tablet/phone browser support isn't entirely there yet. iOS do this all much better than android/wp7 etc
 
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