Anyone Can Create an App: Beginning iPhone and iPad programming

Good for learning how to create apps. I’m an experienced programmer just not with swift and IOS and this seems like a good book to start with. Several mistakes, some of which caused frustration when I couldn’t get the apps working.

I am 11 years old. My mom is trying to teach me in this book. But its too confusing for beginners.

Clearly walks through every step. Only problem is Xcode has is a different version and the book instructions are not translating well to the new version.

The book is easy to read, author makes it interesting. Was delivered in two days as promised.

New to Swift I was disappointed that it did not provide enough information to create what to me would be a simple app.

Begin reading... so far good .

Wendy L. Wise's book is aimed at "absolute programming beginners who've never written a line of code and don't know the underlying concepts for doing so." It is written clearly, it has adequate illustrations, and it follows a good teaching flow, from easiest to hardest in gradual, short-chapter steps. It does a good job of meeting its teaching goals.However, the "Anyone" in this title does come with a few provisos. Most of all, you must be patient and stay focused if you seriously want to learn how to develop applications (apps) for iPhones and iPads. The process can be daunting, especially if you have no prior programming experience. "The key to learning these concepts," the author rightly insists, "is to do the programming exercises in their entirety...There's no better way of learning and understanding than by doing. When you do the exercises, you will make mistakes. Even the best programmers in the world make mistakes. The key is to have patience and work through those mistakes in order to learn."You'll also need a Mac computer (with Sierra OS X 10.12 or newer installed). You'll need to download Xcode, a free integrated development environment (IDE) that will be "the primary tool you'll need to create your apps." You'll need to join the Apple Developer Program (which can be free); and, since you'll be using the Swift 3 programming language, you'll need to learn how to play on Swift Playgrounds, "an Apple app that allows developers to write code and see the results immediately--without having to run the app."The book shows how to develop six apps, ranging from a simple "Hello World" to one that looks up and displays U.S. state abbreviations, and a "Like It or Not" app that allows you to maintain and search a list of product brands you like or dislike.For anyone curious about the Swift programming language and what it takes to develop apps for iPhones and iPads, this book provides essential information and deserves consideration. It could be (with patience and persistence) a helpful launching pad to a new passion--or even a new career.(My thanks to Manning for sending an advance reading copy.)

Anyone Can Create an App by Wendy L. Wise is a book designed for a beginner to learn Swift 3 programming for the iPhone and the iPad. Because Swift is fairly new as a programming language itself, Wendy points out that everyone is a beginner - that there is no one out there who has five years of experience programming in Swift for example. In her writing, Wendy's tone is humble and friendly, and she genuinely appears to want to help individuals learn what she clearly loves- programming- and the introduction provides a nice history into her background and her motivation and inspiration to embark on such a challenging journey of writing a programming book for beginners--and her first book all together.I found the book to be very approachable, the writing and tone welcoming, and if you actually read every sentence (the book is dense and full of information, especially if you are a complete novice like I am) the basic knowledge being conveyed is definitely comprehensible and thorough. The book itself is extremely well-organized. It is divided into three parts, as noted in the Overview: Part 1) basics and learning to create a few apps to build confidence; Part 2) building on the knowledge of Part I and adding new programming concepts, and Part 3) building a Like it or Not (LioN) app, which lets the App user add items to a list and to notate whether they liked the item.Each of the Parts have sub-chapters which tell you exactly what will be covered in the chapter (a grey box that says, "This Chapter Covers" and a few bullet points), and walks you through the process, literally step by step: launching Xcode (a free download of the program you use to write programs), where to find icons on the Mac if you've never had a Mac (very helpful to me), how to get to the screen you need to be at w shortcuts, etc... The explanations are truly helpful, basic and well-organized, and there are many screen shot pics to help you "see" what you should be seeing on your computer screen as you work through her exercises. At the end of each chapter, there is a "Concepts to remember" grey box, that summarizes, also in bullet points, exactly what you just learned, as well as a Summary section right underneath that to recap and review the concepts and terms covered. Wendy even adds nice atta-boys along the way to encourage you to continue, and to show how what you've just accomplished relates to the next task at hand.I am very impressed with they way the material is presented in this book, and how well the subject matter is covered for the very specific tasks being sought- to write an App. What's also great about this material is that in addition to directing you to Apple-specific coding resources that Apple provides via their own Apple Developer Program*, online resources are also provided by the publisher, Manning, which hosts it's own online forum among this book's users, and includes Author Online, providing the opportunity to even ask question of Wendy herself, as well as to access archives of previous discussions w Wendy related to the material.Creating the Apps in the practices in Part I was very understandable, and Wendy leads you buy the hand, and clear pictures show which icons you should be clicking on, and what to type to start Xcode, create a new project and program the exercise into the iOS Simulator. The iOS Simulator is an application built by Apple to help developers see what their App does before putting code into your actual phone, luckily, like a test run. I have no computer background, but am a casual user, and I was able to do this. I didn't get to the advanced sections yet, but have read through several of the sections and the concepts make sense, in language that is understandable. I think getting through this book, will give you a very basic familiarity with the concepts of App creation, and the ability to do the very simple exercises presented. It will also give you a foundation for further learning and enough of a "taste" to know what you don't know, and whether you would be interested in pursuing App development/ programming more seriously.I think this book accomplishes the goal of allowing you to create an App, if you just actually read the thing and do the exercises. I have to say that this book has certainly demystified for me, many of the concepts of how Apps are programmed, and what it would take to actually build a reasonably useful one (way more knowledge than I presently have!!) but knowing what i don't know, really helps. I do recommend this for people serious about learning programming/ development. It is well written, and a beginner like me was able to make the Apps (the presented exercises) by following Wendy's directions.*Appendix A shows how to join the Apple Developer Program for free if you want to use your created App only on your own iPhone (Wendy recommends this for the work in this book), or for a $99 fee if you plan to submit your App to the App Store and go live.