The CWC Success Story of Terry

by Arthur Nielsen Demain and Chris Ching Last updated April 24, 2023

The CWC Success Stories is an ongoing campaign where we feature the diverse iOS app development learning journeys of our students from all over the world. Every type of success has a place in this campaign: from overcoming initial learning setbacks to landing exciting developer jobs, from releasing iOS apps to just simply feeling the joy of learning a new skill. Whatever success stories our students have, we will all celebrate them here! 

For the eleventh installment of this campaign we are pleased to feature the CWC Success Story of Terry. Terry’s long and successful career highlights his perseverance to learn all the skills that he needed to achieve his goals. Now he has four amazing apps published on the App Store! Keep on reading Terry’s inspirational journey below!

“What we lacked financially, we made up in learning skills”

I grew up in Appalachia.  If you’ve ever seen the movie “Deliverance”, that would be the part of the country we’re talking about. There wasn’t much civilization around except that my parents were prolific readers and we had hundreds of books from Aristotle to Nietzsche as well as books on various sciences and arts. Reading, from a very early age was non-optional. What we lacked financially, we made up for in skills.  We had a very nice house because we built it.  We even made the furniture in the house.  We had cars that we fixed ourselves and we grew most of our food. We also had a beat up old fiddle which I managed to pick up.  That gave me a ticket to a prestigious private college that was looking to build an orchestra and the rest is history although I couldn’t have predicted it.

Computers were not a commonly available tool back then and they weren’t deemed a career.  Indeed, electronic calculators weren’t even available.  College courses still used slide rules but the school did have an IBM 1170 in the basement that professors were playing with.  One chemistry professor had taken a particular interest because of the leverage it provided in doing complex analysis that otherwise would take weeks and actually started a new department for computer science as a subset of the math department.  Most of the early adopters were musicians like me because we already were comfortable with an abstract language (music notation).

Multidisciplinary background

My career spanned an unlikely combination of education and experience from the arts, national defense, data systems and aerospace, data processing, integrated systems, client-server, internet and web architectures, big data analytics and cyber security.  I always used software as a tool for solving complex problems so as languages changed, at least that remained. I imagined I would never want to work in an industry that rewarded the ability to solve problems and indeed had no intention of ever retiring but the corporate tech world is quite intolerant of age. It is even more intolerant of illness and despite beating two forms of cancer, unwritten corporate cultures closed many doors.  Then came COVID and with it, even greater intolerance. I went from working with congressional panels as an independent consultant for data solutions and privacy issues to “crickets”.

“Chris is a master of deconstruction and simplification!”

Even though I had 50 years experience with computers and programming, iOS apps are very different.  Even the term “coding” is dismissive.  It reduces the process to one of simple annotation and app development is anything but that.  App development encompasses the entire lifecycle from concept to publishing in a way that no other environment does.  IOS is neither process driven nor data driven.  It is “view” and “state” driven.  CWC helped me realize that I was overthinking Xcode and Chris is a master of deconstruction and simplification.  The best part is that the App Store doesn’t care how old you are. Still, age comes with disadvantages.  You just don’t remember as easily all those permutations of syntax that go along with an encyclopedia of classes, structs and all their methods in your 70s as you did in your 20s or 30s.  Throughout my career, systems were complex data driven processes involving millions of lines of code. CWC helped me realize that app development is about producing a story in a series of states (called views). Everything else is built around that and SwiftUI with its libraries, frameworks, & protocols makes it easier.

Coding is sometimes annoying but still the easy part.  I like to think it’s more about solving problems but, with apps it’s more like the entertainment industry (find a popular theme, develop a story and produce it in an entertaining format.)  When I realized that I was overthinking the whole thing, the CWC approach was very effective in covering the whole process of design, production and publishing in a way the other YouTubers weren’t. There are many YouTubers showing various granular Xcode features and swift protocols but none package the process as exhaustively as CWC.

Four published apps

So far, I’ve published four apps on the app store. One is a promotional app for a small business and the other three are strictly entertainment.  The first was a game that allows the player to play with probabilities around popular myths such as astrology & numerology,  The second was a text based branching game and the third was a puzzle game that exercises knowledge of probability and combinatorics to promote math curiosity. They are all showcased here.

Although the last two include in-app purchase and ads, they have not been money makers.  I’m currently working on a tax ledger app and  expansion of the promotional app for the life & wellness coach business.  

“Coding is not supposed to be easy”

If you are new to the industry, don’t be intimidated. The quickest learners are the ones with no history and there are plenty of talents to leverage in app development.  Coding isn’t everything.  If you are interested in learning how to build iOS apps but do not have programming/coding talent,  you shouldn’t let that be the detractor.  Contrary to popular belief, not everyone can build code. To do that you have to be a builder.  What is more important is what other talents you bring to the table (story teller, organizer, artist & tester). One of the most difficult but important parts of app development that I struggle with is the user experience design/development which does not involve coding at all but can make or break the popularity of an app. Still, it is an advantage if you at least know enough about the coding process to appreciate what others have to do to make your visions come to life.   

So, if you are currently studying iOS app development but feel like giving up, don’t.  It’s not supposed to be easy.  After 50 years, I’m still learning. Look at all the functional areas and see if one fits your talents.  There is screen layout, user experience (the flow of screens), graphics, storyline and testing and over the years I have known people brilliant in one or more of these who couldn’t write a line of code.  If the actual coding process isn’t your cup of tea, find out if you have an eye for story and entertainment.  

We hope that the CWC Success Story of Terry has motivated you in some way.

Thank you so much for sharing your story with us, Terry!

We are so proud of you!

Are you a CWC student who has a success story to share? Get in touch with us at care@codewithchris.com

Are you inspired by Terry to start your own iOS app development learning journey? Learn with us today.