Something I have always wanted to get involved with is creating apps. This evening I took my leap of faith and dabbled in getting stuck in. I have only created the app by following a tutorial, but even then making sure that I understood the process behind each step was quite a challenge.
The whole Xcode interface is a scary place as soon as you open up the software, but the tutorial I followed from the Apple developer website eased the process for me.
To be perfectly honest, at first I failed…
I had followed all the steps (or so I thought I had) and for some reason when I hit “Run” it said “Build Succeeded” but nothing showed up in the iOS Simulator. I was so perplexed. I had a look at all the lines of code and simply could not find an error. Instead of getting frustrated and giving up I decided to start from scratch.
Despite having to re-do all of the processes again, I found that I was not having to refer as much to the tutorial. It had almost become second nature. I came to the end of the page and it said okay, hit “Run”. I braced myself just incase for whatever reason it had not worked again…
To my pleasant surprise the iOS Simulator showed my creation. Result! I was overjoyed!
How marvellous! It works, it actually works!
And then I hit a problem.
I could press the “Hello” button and I could type, but I could not get rid of the keyboard once I had typed something in and pressed enter on my keyboard. Argh! How agonising!
I continued reading, there was a next page… Thank you! The tutorial gave clear instructions on what to do next and steps that I would have to carry out in order for the keyboard to disappear.
Eventually I got the app to run and this is what I have created:
Yes this app is not necessarily the world’s best creation or anything of that grandeur and magnitude. However, it is amazing to see a creation come to life that I could not necessarily touch (by way of an iOS device) but I could simulate how it would have been interacted with. I know I was following a tutorial but that was really so I could get up to speed with the software!
The foundations have been laid for the future!