Jan 14 2012

iPAD App Development – Can a Student Write an App with Little Programming Experience?

So one thing I continue to here is “5 year old creates an iPAD app” when I am searching with Duck Duck Go – however whenever I go to the articles and

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stories I do wonder as it never seems to show how the person created the app. Recent articles include :-

So is it that easy – well in truth no. Since my ZX Spectrum programming days things have not really got much easier – however below are a few hints and tips for budding IB students intent on writing an iPAD application.

Android the Alternative

Slightly counter intuitive but I will start by saying that it seems that Programming apps for Android is at the moment simpler and has some really excellent resources. I would recommend anyone goes to Apps for Good and signs up as there tutorials and resources are second to none – and a great and real step by step way to learn how to program Android Apps. However it just so happens Google have closed down the easy to use online App Inventor that all the tutorials are for – and although MIT are taking up the project at this moment in time it has not been fully setup – so I wait with baited breath.

iPAD apps with help from Software

There are a number of separate applications that do take the programming out of creating the APP – the problem they are often expensive or if free then make sure that you pay a continual fee for your app getting into the iTUNES store. These include  :-

However there is one great alternative that I have not fully looked into yet – which some High School students in Hong Kong managed to conquer – described by Wesley Fryer where students used Webkit Open Source Project and jqTouch – which looks like a great alternative to some of the above.

iPHONE/ iPAD Tutorials

There are now a growing number of iPAD tutorials and this is a great time to mention UDEMY – note they have Android tutorials as well including “Write and Publish an Android App” that is free. However UDEMY has a wider variety of iPAD video tutorials some of which you need to pay for but many free like this one. Obviously you can find the usual “Hello World ” text tutorials all over the place.

Programming on the iPAD itself

Recent interesting development in that Apple has finally let an APP allow people to code and program on the iPAD itself. It is called Codea and I have already had a play and it looks like fun. You need to use a Programming language called Lua – which I had not heard of before but is Open Source and has a number of resources to help you out.

So in Conclusion

Is it easy – well as you may have guessed I have not had the time to really explore and from all this initial research I would say no. However I do have a few programming geeks in my IT class – so I believe for their major project they will may want to go down a programming route and maybe the iPAD programming route will be the perfect opportunity. Come back over the next few months to see if it happens!

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By drtech • ipad • Comments Off on iPAD App Development – Can a Student Write an App with Little Programming Experience?