Hi, this is a minute of Overpass, my name is Eric and I make apps.
Now this week I wanna talk about how to learn how to develop apps.
After last week's video I got a comment from somebody called iClash, Clash of Clans and
more, which is great of keywords in your name by the way, and what he said wants to learn
how to develop apps.
And I kinda said, well what you should do is put something out quickly, don't spend
a lot of time developing it, get it on to the apps store - which the topic of last week's
video.
And he came back saying "No, that's not it.
I'm an absolute beginner.
I wanna know how to develop apps."
So this is basically meant for iClash or anybody else out there who wants to develop their
own apps or their own games and wanna know where to get started.
There are tools out there where you could use to make apps without learning any code
at all like there a, if you're gonna do a game, there's one called GameSalad, which
is actually pretty advanced.
You could drag things out to the interface and set triggers and stuff.
A little bit like Scratch if you've used that before.
A lot of kids use that.
If you do things like business applications, there's one out there called Appy Pie, there's
once called Good Barber.
We're kinda working on something that's in the works at the moment.
So there are ways of making an app without learning to code however, think of it like
a using sentences.
Like if we're gonna learn Italian, if you don't know Italian, and you were going to
learn a bunch of phrases.
Now those phrases will help you converse and will help you get by in Italy but they won't
teach you how to make sentences.
Now, what you would have to do is deconstruct those phrases and make it into individual
parts.
And that's all that code is.
When I moved to England eighteen years ago, I had no coding experience.
My degree, I just got my degree from University and it was in History.
So somehow, I got a job out here in a computer job.
And I like to talk about the time I checked a book out from a library.
It is the book that's had the biggest, most profound impact on my life so far and it's
called Visual Basic 5 in 21 Days.
I read this book, not in 21 days, it took me a lot longer, but that book has made me
hundreds of thousands of pounds in the year since.
Because that was the point where I realized that I could learn something and learn how
to code something.
You have to understand, I was working in a place where everybody had Computer graduate
Degrees and I kinda thought, "Well that's something for somebody else."
And learning to code is actually not as hard as you might think.
I can't really go too much into it in such a short video here but one thing you need
to understand is that you're going to be bad at it at first.
So learning how to do some very basic coding, you're gonna make mistakes and you're gonna
think that's it's not for you.
But the truth is, the people who designed these languages, however misguided they might
be, actually kind of hope that most people will be able to understand it.
So, when you're learning a language, it's not not meant for you.
It's kinda meant for everybody.
It's like very fine level descriptions.
It's like, like I said, you take a phrase, you take it apart, you get the sentences,
you get the grammar - it's learning that grammar.
It's not "not meant for people".
I mean binary is not meant for people, code is meant for people.
So, in terms of what kind of language you should learn - now if you're looking at the
games, I still like Corona SDK and that's based on Lua.
It's a very easy language to learn.
It's not very portable so you might not get a job with it, if that's what you're looking
to do.
But you can develop an app and you could do a really nice game.
If you're learning, if you go into JavaScript, which is for some reason has just become the
"the language" lately, you could do lots of business applications.
You could do server programming, you could do all kinds of things.
I mean, if I was gonna talk to a new developer just coming up, I would say go into JavaScript.
I went into the Visual Basic C sharp, all the Microsoft stack.
But right now, JavaScript is the big thing.
Or if you're just interested in games, you could also do Objective C, although I think
that's, in my experience, it's a lot more difficult.
Then you could do something like Cocos2DX, there's a JavaScript version as well but that
won't help you create games for both Android and iPhone as well.
But Corona SDK, if you learn Lua, which I tell you is a very easy language to learn,
you can start coding games right away.
It used to cost like 600 pounds or 600 dollars a year, now it's free to be able to put games
out.
So anyway, iClash thank you very much for commenting on the video.
Don't worry, you could do a game.
I mean, you can make an app or a game.
If you use something like GameSalad, you could get it out there right away.
If you learn just some very basic, find some tutorials online on coding in Lua, you do
Corona SDK, some tutorials on JavaScript, which will be a little bit harder but then
you'll still be able to do that.
And thanks for commenting.
That's week for this week's minute of Overpass.
Now if you're watching this on the iTunes podcast, please leave a review.
And if you're watching this on YouTube, please comment like iClash did or like the video,
or subscribe all that kind of stuff.
The same if you're watching this on LinkedIn or Facebook.
So that's it for this week, talk to you next week.
Goodbye!