I started learning Swift in October 2015. The release of the iPhone 6s got me excited enough to finally take the plunge into something I had wanted to do for quite a while. I used it to occupy my time whilst in a rainy Dorset - I specifically remember the rain - during a half term break in my final year of school. I stuck with it for about a week and a half before going back to school and forgetting about it. Just under a year later in September 2016, I had left school, had no plans and was very bored.
Using a mixture of YouTube videos and Udemy courses, I began re-learning the small amounts of Swift 2.0 I had learnt the year before, and started adjusting to the then-new Swift 3.0 (Xcode makes this very easy so it required very little effort on my part). Within a month I was ready to release Freezr 1.0 onto the App Store. Between October 2016 and March 2017 I released a few minor updates which introduced small things such as custom sounds and fonts, but since then Freezr has remained unchanged.
I’m currently working on Freezr 1.5, which I will release by the end of 2017. I’m not going to make any promises as to what will be included in this update, but yeah, it’s a big one. The point is, anyone can learn to code. I have learnt almost entirely through making my own mistakes and then spending countless hours trying to fix them (usually at 1AM on some obscure forum when I have work at 9AM). There are still so many things I’m not confident with, including some of the basics. In fact, I have a list on the Apple Notes app of the simple things I should understand - but don’t. That way, I’ll get round to researching them fully at some point soon.
The Internet is an amazing tool, and we are lucky to have it. Through it’s support and my own mistakes I have created an app that’s currently being used by 7,000 people - something I definitely didn’t expect this time last year.
Don’t expect to be an coding expert from the get-go, it takes a lot of work and perseverance, but you’ll get there eventually. In the meantime, you can create a bunch of awesome apps, whilst continuously developing your own skills.
:))