Switching Gears
Better late than never on getting a post in for week five. I can handle the intense learning schedule that we are on but for some reason putting my thoughts down on paper, or digital screen, is so much harder than coding.
In our first four weeks we dove into Objective-C and got a good foundation for iOS development. Objective-C was completely different than the development language that I previously used but it was good to get some hands on time with it. Especially since it is still widely used out in the world. Enough about Objective-C for now though as that’s not the focus of week five. This week we switched gears and started using Swift.
I had taken a look at Swift a little before class started, and our pre-work was done in Swift, so it wasn’t the first time that I had seen it. However, I must say it was the first time that I actually understood what I was looking at. While I was able to comprehend some things when looking at Swift on my own, there were some aspects that were beyond me at the time. Optionals anyone?
Despite having feelings like I was starting over, digging into Swift was really fun. Not to say that Objective-C wasn’t fun, it was just different. Things finally started to click later in the week as we worked through our assignments but my head was still spinning a bit trying to get used to the syntax differences and the different ways of accomplishing certain things. I definitely like the type safety aspect of Swift and am slowly warming up to optionals.
While there are still moments where I’m uncertain about what I’m doing it’s a pretty great feeling when things fall in place and you realize that you may actually know what you’re doing. I’m sure that I will be on this roller coaster of doubting myself and feeling excited for what we’ve accomplished many more times before this ride is over but it will definitely be worth it.