A designer’s journey to app development

I took Khan Academy’s challenge on creating a book list database, and I instantly had a ton of questions. I’m trying to understand the user interaction on a frontend with an app and how that would correlate to changes in the database. For instance, when I tap on books on the right hand side, I…

I’ve been listening to lot of podcasts about app development, and getting the genesis of an idea. This isn’t original to me by any means, but rather some of the great developers I’m following on Mastodon. I’m starting to wonder if I could build something physical, like a kitchen timer, that I could “turn” in…

So I tried my very first database test. First of all, Khan Academy is amazing. The way the audio lesson works with an in-browser IDE Is “chef’s kiss”. Second, ChatGPT is like magic. I took the very first lesson and got stuck. Everything was relatively straightforward. My goal, on this last line, was to modify…

I’m starting at the very beginning. I have a vague concept of databases, thanks to my many years working with development teams on applications. I understand that a database is like a spreadsheet, and my interactions with the app are essentially submitting requests to modify data on those tables. Beyond that basic relational connection, I…

I’m going through the page on basic templates for SwiftUI and am reminded about what a great writer Paul is. It’s so helpful how he breaks things down. This is bringing back to mind some of the cool stuff I’ve learned already, about what goes in a View, VStack and HStack, and a few other…

I’ve fiddled with new projects in SwiftUI in Xcode a bunch of times. I’m hoping all that will build on my attempts now and lead to some true learning. Making documenting will help? Since last Fall I’ve been trying to build a little birthday app. I’ve re-designed it a half dozen times, and tried to…

I want to make an iPhone app, but I’m a designer and not really a developer. I have a background in web development; making WordPress website, coding HTML and CSS by hand, etc. I know a lot of the pieces, but I haven’t done much coding in the past half dozen years. Since last Fall…