Code First Girls is a non-profit organisation that provides free tech education to women in England. I recently signed up to one of the MOOC sprints to learn more about iOS development. The programme is for an hour each Wednesday evening for 4 weeks with a quiz and homework. I mainly watched the recordings rather than the live sessions, but here are my notes from the course as I work through it. This is my second MOOC I have done with CFG.

Table to contents here:

Week 1: Introduction to iOS Dev

Why make something for Apple?

Apple has the largest market share for mobile phones (about 33%).

Developing for iOS

• iOS SDK

• XCode IDE

• Swift = programming language used for iOS apps. Developed by Apple in 2014.

• SwiftUI = UI Framework. Developed by Apple in 2019. Declarative program. Structs.

• Developer Program = membership program (paid membership but free features)

There are some other ways to create apps with Javascript and ReachJs e.g. Expo, Thunkable, Appy Pie (not covered in this tutorial).

Creating our first app

• Need to install XCode (can only do this on a Mac)

• Create new project

• Select iOS App (and then follow instructions)

• Pay around with the sample code

import SwiftUI

struct ContentView: View {
    var body: some View {
        VStack {
            Image(systemName: "heart")
                .imageScale(.large)
                .foregroundColor(.accentColor)
            Text("pssst....")
                .padding()

        }
        .padding()
    }
}

struct ContentView_Previews: PreviewProvider {
    static var previews: some View {
        ContentView()
    }
}

VStact = view container (vertical) Image() = where to put images (can upload to XCode or use system images) .something = feature of the parent

Syntax

keywords, operators, data types, identifiers

• struct= ContentView; body; ContentView_previews; previews

• Protocol = PreviewProvider (allows us to see things in the simulation and is part of SwiftUI)

Project for the Sprint

Draughts. 5 screens.

import SwiftUI

struct ContentView: View {
    var body: some View {
        VStack {
            
            Text("Draughts")
                .font(.largeTitle)
                .padding()
            HStack{
                Image(systemName: "checkerboard.rectangle")
                    .imageScale(.large)
                    .foregroundColor(.pink)
                Text("Play")
            }
            
            HStack{
                Image(systemName: "checkerboard.rectangle")
                    .imageScale(.large)
                    .foregroundColor(.pink)
                Text("Stats")
            }
            
            Text("CFG iOS App Dev MOOC")
                .padding()
        }

    }
}

struct ContentView_Previews: PreviewProvider {
    static var previews: some View {
        ContentView()
    }
}

Thoughts and feelings of week 1:

I found this really fun. Of course it was very basic because it was the first session. But I already learnt a lot - i had zero experience before doing this MOOC so it was really cool. I got to play around with some of the code to see how it works while also keeping up with the live talk.

Keywords / acronyms

• SDK = software devlopment kit

• Imperative = tell exact steps how the programe needs to be run.

• Keywords = reserved words

• Protocol = set of rules that a thing (data type etc) must follow; defines methods, properties etc that must exist

• Struct = groups related information together; has properties;

• View Containers = special type of view; contain views; arrange/group views