
Ask HN: How to become an expert iOS developer? What are the steps? - tat_xcitd_dev
I want to be a contract mobile app developer! To stay in the tough market I knew I should become an expert, I can’t become an expert just by working on some projects. So I want to see the whole picture. And I do know the experts in HN will be kind enough to help me. Please mention links books or other materials&#x2F;tools I should read, use or must have! Thanks and I hope this helps the iOS dev community!
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DrNuke
>I want to be a contract mobile app developer! >So I want to see the whole
picture.

Wake up, son, this bubble burst in 2012! Serious answer is the market is too
tough nowadays to make a living without an exceptional alignment of talent,
networking and big luck.

~~~
tat_xcitd_dev
DrNuke thanks for the honest answer! This might sound dumb but can you mention
the list of talents I must have to establish myself in the market? Thank you

~~~
DrNuke
Cheers! First of all, you need strong self-esteem to keep going without
getting discouraged by the many and many and many rejections of any kind you
will face along the road. Second, from a technical point of view it really
depends on what you are going to work on (games, consumer apps, business apps,
etc.) and what you are exactly willing to offer: programming, deployment,
quality assurance, etc. Third, networking is the key: start by meeting like-
minded people locally and work in team to build a portfolio until you get your
first gig. Fourth, you are on HN and therefore smart enough to know that
Google is your best friend to grow a skillset on your own, so just start with
searching “ios mobile developer how to start” from past year and have a look
at the first page of results. Good luck!

~~~
tat_xcitd_dev
Thanks DrNuke! And Thanks for the great advice. FYI I am not new to iOS
development and I am an iOS developer with a decent experience. I am googling
for many years sir! But I still need good materials that people went through
already and I need their word for it, for E.g. the books offered by
raywenderlich.com looks pretty promising but I’m not sure how informative or
helpful it will be. So I hope the experts at HN can provide me and other iOS
developers a direction to become an expert, the parts of iOS sdk we should
master and the skills we should acquire to become the best.

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mobilehackersio
Your question has been featured on the lastest weekly of
[https://mobilehackers.io](https://mobilehackers.io)

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hackermailman
Here's the steps to become highly informed in whatever technology:

1) Search through university course listings and youtube for introductory
lectures on said subject and it's related subjects. Example, these basic
design lectures, note all these lectures are open
[http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/uicourse/05863fall17/schedule.htm...](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/uicourse/05863fall17/schedule.html)
or these Stanford iOS development lectures
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/developing-ios-11-apps-
wi...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/developing-ios-11-apps-with-
swift/id1309275316) or Github for curated lists of iOS resources
[https://github.com/search?q=iOS+resources](https://github.com/search?q=iOS+resources)

2) Go on some freelancer site or Craigslist and offer to make prototype iOS
apps or just write your own hobby programs and release them as free software
to gain experience/feedback.

3) Search Google Scholar for relevant things to your field/interests, like
this Mobile Research Practical Guide and if you don't have access to a library
or money use sci-hub [http://sci-
hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.2200/S00763ED1V01Y20170...](http://sci-
hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.2200/S00763ED1V01Y201703MPC012)

4) Find out core things in said technology you should care about and how to
work around them, for example iOS: unpredictable variation in network quality,
lowered trust and robustness of mobile elements, limitations on local
resources imposed by weight and size constraints, and concern for battery
power consumption.

5) Find more advanced courses that help with understanding core issues you've
identified [https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~15-821/](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~15-821/)
note all the required reading, again get the doi's and look them up at public
library/sci-hub for free

6) For the whole picture see how you can write once, deploy everywhere ie:
OCaml/ReasonML or webassembly [https://jaredforsyth.com/posts/making-a-cross-
platform-mobil...](https://jaredforsyth.com/posts/making-a-cross-platform-
mobile-game-in-reason-ocaml/) taking into account all the big picture things
such as battery consuption and network unreliablity you identified in Step 4.

*edited to fix links

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tat_xcitd_dev
Thank you very much! This is really informative.

