Ask HN: How long will it take to make an iPhone app w/ no experience?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2623593

by Hisoka • 15 years ago

8 6 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm a programmer. I know Java, Python, Ruby on Rails, Javascript/CSS, but I have no experience developing iPhone apps. I know it uses Objective C, and Cocoa, but other than that, I don't know anything else.

Let's say I want to build an iPhone app that's fairly complex to use, such as an app that keeps track of spending and budgeting. Suppose I have 4 hours per day to work on this. How long do you think it will take me to complete the entire app (from learning Objective C, design, implementation, etc)?

davidbanham• 15 years ago

You might want to consider leveraging all that knowledge you already have with something like http://www.phonegap.com/

gspyrou• 15 years ago

Phonegap https://build.phonegap.com/ + JQuery Mobile http://jquerymobile.com/demos/1.0a4.1/

eof• 15 years ago

two months

seymores• 15 years ago

6months

aherlambang• 15 years ago

I'd say 2-4 months, depending on how fast you learn stuff. If you are used with C it makes things much easier

MattBearman• 15 years ago

Just quoting a time is not much use to anyone, so I'll try to give info about the first app I made:

Working full time with no prior experience in objective c or cocoa, it took me 3 weeks to build an app that is essentially a sign up form used at trade shows on an iPad. It stores all submissions in a sqlite database, and pushes them to a custom API. Also uses a postcode database to find the nearest center to the user's postcode.

Having said all that, I too would recommend phone gap.

Ask HN: How long will it take to make an iPhone app w/ no experience?

Related Stories