

Ask HN: Can anyone really learn iOS in 8 weeks? - brandonpassley

People continue to be in disbelief when I tell them we took five amazing people who have little to no experience with code and helped them become employable iOS developers in 8 weeks during our pilot program this past fall at the Mobile Makers Academy (http://mobilemakers.co)<p>I've had this conversation with so many people and the feedback is typically "iOS is so much harder than Ruby on Rails, you need more than 8 weeks". I'm assuming this comes from the lack of experience with compiled languages, memory management, etc.<p>What are your thoughts on being able to learn iOS in 8 weeks and becoming a jr. developer? Is it possible?
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nanijoe
I know you are pretty much promoting your company here, but iOS development is
much much easier than web development. IF you work through any of the
available beginner books , you should be able to make your first basic app in
less time than 8 weeks.

~~~
brandonpassley
Ah. I was trying not to make it come off as an ad. I am really, really curious
what everyone thinks. It's also interesting to hear this perspective. I think
I get your point. I'm assuming you are a web developer :D

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electronvolt
If someone already had coding experience, definitely. Without it: probably
still possible if they're smart and working on it for most of the time (so 5-8
hours a day).

It's surprising how quickly smart people can learn if they're interested and
focused. At a summer camp called CTY (run by Hopkins), I saw a few hundred
late middle and early high school students learn the equivalent (or more) of a
semester's worth of college material (some at the upper undergraduate level at
a top tier college) in three weeks.

Covering the equivalent of a semester long intro-CS and basic digital logic
circuits in three weeks is hard for anyone (or a full abstract algebra course,
or a theory of computation course, etc.), but it's possible to do as a smart
8th grader. Given sufficient drive and time every day (CTY does 7 hours of
classroom time every weekday), you could cover almost three college semesters
of material with smart 8th-11th graders: there's almost no doubt that with
smart adults you could do more. That's certainly enough time to take them from
the basics to knowing enough about a single technology to make large projects
in it. My only concern is that it probably isn't future proof: they would
probably have a somewhat hard time learning a new technology because of the
compressed learning experience. In general, I'd say overall retention rates
from really compressed courses like the ones I mentioned above are much lower,
so unless they kept building iOS apps immediately after the course they might
have a harder time picking them back up than a person who learned the same
material over a longer period.

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zdgman
This "8 week" number thrown around by every company looking to teach people to
code where did it come from? Does someone have an independent study that backs
up the 8 week figure or is everyone choosing it because it sounds good?

I love all these programs now and believe 8 weeks is enough to learn the
basics. The goal after the program would be to instill a life long quest to
better your skills each day not how much iOS makes you a hotshot.

~~~
xauronx
Related: <http://www.viddler.com/v/c8809791>

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plinkplonk
This is an ad, thinly disguised as an "Ask HN" question.

(Hello brand new account with no other submissions or comments)

That said, once you strip the company promotion from (roll eyes)

"People continue to be in disbelief when I tell them we took five amazing
people who have little to no experience with code and helped them become
employable iOS developers in 8 weeks"

we are left with "five people (of unknown prior programming experience) got
jobs after eight weeks of 'training' ".

Sure, why not, in a bubble, crazy things happen.

Personally I am very dubious that anyone can learn programming _from scratch_
in eight weeks, except to a point of 'can barely function and need constant
hand holding from more senior devs'. I suspect even geniuses like John Carmack
took much longer.

People with prior programming experience, especially in the C family of
languages, or with embedded experience, can probably get good enough to do a
passable job of iOS dev in eight weeks of intense work, but that is true
without these 'learn programming X in eight weeks' style training courses.

But, again, this is an ad, disguised as a question. Should be flagged imo.

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mchannon
I think in this case it's like driving a car, flying a plane, speaking
Mandarin, or performing surgery- at which point is someone proficient enough
to call themselves a developer?

Knowing only about 1% of the commands, code, and frameworks available to a top
iOS developer can still produce some impressive results.

Teaching a child to write a fart app in 8 weeks- easy.

Teaching a child to write a top 10 app in 8 weeks- next to impossible.

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laveur
Teaching the basics can be done in 8 weeks. But to teach someone everything
they could ever need to know build an app that does amazing stuff? Impossible
in that time frame. I've been at this since the very early stages (iOS 2.0
Beta 3, 2008). And I still feel like I don't know enough.

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benray
I think smart people can do this definitely. But for people like me who need a
lot time to practice, it's really a challenge.

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pbogdan
Slightly off-topic, but could anyone recommend any good resources for getting
started with iOS development?

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nanijoe
Buy a book. Make an app . Release on app store. Dont worry about finding the
perfect book, just buy one (I'm partial towards the LaMarche book), work
through the examples, then build your own app. IF you run into any hurdles
while building your app, google and stackoverflow are your tech support.

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peterchon
Sure, anything can be learned quickly. Problem is the drive to master it.

