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Discussion on: I am a lawyer who became a iOS developer, Ask Me Anything!

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jadekin profile image
Karen Pinzás Morrongiello • Edited

Thank you so much! Yes, I realized that not knowing too much math doesn’t make me a bad developer. But, to be honest, now I kind of enjoy learning math, when I am leaving my fears on a side. In fact, I am interested in planning my own curricula to learn the topics that you usually learn at school.

Now, the questions!

  1. I have been developing iOS for 5 years! I forgot to mention is that my first internship was in IOS development (I started when iOS 6 was the latest version). So that is the only area when I have worked since I started to develop.

  2. I started to program months before Swift was released so I learned objective c first. And I loved objective c. Keep in mind that, at that moment, I just did some exercises in Java so practically, objective c was my first programming language. Everything that was wrong in Objective C, for me, was normal so I wasn’t really affected because of that. When Swift was released, I was astonished and I cried when I got home: after some months of really challenging work, I had to learn a whole new thing. I was devastated because I didn’t know how much difficult could be to learn a new programming language. Then, I realized that when you have the ideas in mind, it is just to change them a little bit. My first code in swift was a little bit objective c-ish, then I figure out how to use the good things of the language. Now, because I am working in a really large codebase, I use objective c and swift. Now, because I am working in a really large codebase, I use objective c and swift.

  3. If I need to recommend a book to a developer, it would be Grit by Angela Duckworth. It is not related to development, but I think is really helpful to build the right mindset to learn. When you listen several times "he is a ninja developer", "oh, he is a unicorn", you think that talent is the only think that you need to be a developer, without thinking that hard work and perseverance are so important. But, to be accurate with the question, the technical book I would recommend is Working with legacy code by Michael Feathers. It is really useful when you have to work with large codebase and you don't know how would be the best process to follow.

  4. Not storyboard. I haven't used storyboard for almost three years now. For me, it is because of practical reasons: I am done dealing with merging conflicts in storyboard. :) And sometimes Xcode takes a lot of time to show you the storyboard. I usually create my UI programatically, but for some small UIViews that I would like to have clear, I can use Xibs.

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ruffle1986 profile image
Tamas Fodor

Thank you so much for your answers!

I could not even imagine what it is like to be a person for whom Objective c is the normal and being afraid of Swift. :) And I think that's good because, as far as I know, Objective c is still on the plate as your example points it out. :)

Thanks for the books. I put them on my reading list. "Working with legacy code" was already there. :)

It seems like I can't skip the no-storyboard path. I've heard it from a lot of iOS dev that Storyboard just prevents them from being productive. Such a waste. I fell in love with it immediately because it was soo convenient for beginners like me to build interfaces.

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jadekin profile image
Karen Pinzás Morrongiello

And it is! The only thing is the merging conflicts that appear one in a while. If you like to use interface builder, try to use xibs or try to use several storyboards, and not just one :)

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ruffle1986 profile image
Tamas Fodor

I'll definitely look after what this Xib thing is. Today I learned. 🙏👍