A big fan of video games
Just like many other beginners, Christian Dentico did not study programming in college or even had a job in iOS app development. What captured his interest in this field is his huge passion for video games. He just did not want to stop at merely enjoying these games; he wanted to make them himself. He had the following to say:
“My background is in pharmaceuticals and I am a practicing pharmacist. I have never taken an official programming course despite many years of university studies. You’re probably wondering how a pharmacist gets interested in app development! I’ve always been a fan of video games(specifically Nintendo’s classics: Zelda, Mario, Metroid, etc.) and one of my dreams was to always design or make my own video game. Sadly, I never ended up pursuing education that would allow me to work for a company that produces video games on flagship consoles. Still wanting to design my own game, I decided I would try and produce a video game for mobile devices since this would inevitably be much easier to do without a team of software developers and a big budget. That’s how I got interested in app development and decided to learn how to code!”
“So many resources and languages…”
Just like what many people are feeling, getting started in learning iOS app development can be overwhelming and confusing. Being inundated with so many tutorials, lessons, bootcamps, videos, and books can definitely confuse rather than help. You are not alone because Christian experienced the same thing:
“There are hundreds if not thousands of resources on the internet to help teach people how to code. To complicate things further, there are multiple coding languages that each allow you to accomplish different tasks on different devices. Trying to figure out which resource to dedicate time to and more importantly what language to start with is probably one of the most difficult decisions any prospective app developer has to make. After going through multiple sites and trying a few lessons I ended up seeing free YouTube lessons by CWC and decided to try the series on iOS app development.”
“CWC gave me the confidence…”
Yet the initial confusion dissipated after Christian benefited from CWC’s well-structured and clearly explained tutorials. The support of his fellow CWC learners and the dedicated CWC staff were also crucial in his growth as an iOS app developer. CWC has helped him so much that he was able to publish an app in the end!
“From the beginning I found that the CWC videos on Xcode and Swift were well thought out and clear. Topics were well organized in a logical way that made going through them a breeze and I enjoyed the simplicity that CWC brought to the learning process. Learning was just easier with this series and following along the videos I was quickly making basic applications from the beginning on my own iPhone. It gave me some confidence since I could show friends a few simple applications that I had coded myself along with the guides and tutorials in CWC. Once I had a bit more knowledge I started to make a few modifications to the simple applications I had made through the series and I gradually made more and more complex changes until I was eventually making my own applications.
I initially had no knowledge or very limited knowledge about coding (that i had learned from a few sites and videos online) and through CWC I eventually started to learn how Xcode works, learn the basics of Swift and learn how to make applications for iPhone. The series also helped me know where to look if I had any questions or wanted more information on certain things. Though I eventually needed to learn through other sites in order to accomplish what I wanted to do with my end goal application, CWC helped me build a good base that would allow me to eventually get to the level I wanted to be at in order to develop my application and publish it!”
Dante’s Quest
Christian finally managed to fulfill his dream of building his own video game. He has this to say about his app, Dante’s Quest:
“My iOS app that I developed and released on the App Store is called Dante’s Quest. This app is a 2D top-down dungeon crawler style video game. You play as the protagonist Dante as you fight enemies, solve puzzles and decipher riddles in order to gain ancient powers to have a chance at defeating the evil King Clef. The game plays very similarly to the original Zelda on the NES and it was my inspiration for the whole game. I decided to make this type of game for iOS because I found that though there are thousands of games available on mobile devices many of them are simplistic and short and I wanted to try and bring a bigger experience to iOS. I hope that people will appreciate and enjoy the work I put into this game!”
“Just dive in and enjoy the process!”
Christian has some valuable advice to those who are hesitating to learn iOS app development:
“I would say the best thing to do is to just start learning and dedicate a small amount of time every day to coding. Any resource you start with can help you learn and try not to spend too much time deciding where to start and just dive in! Though not all programming languages are the same there are a lot of similarities between the languages. Even if you do realize that you started with the “wrong” language for what you want to do, what you learned will most probably still be useful in learning something else.
Writing applications is difficult and takes a lot of time and effort to not have any bugs! The whole process is like trying to learn a new language and then immediately using that language to write a novel! Don’t be discouraged if you don’t succeed in the beginning because everybody, even the experts, get error messages and bugs! I myself made a lot of mistakes learning and developing my application but I learned to love coding and just enjoy the process!”
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