Welcome to my blog! You can call me Lz, I am an iOS and Website Developer who is based in the U.S. I have been programming for over 5 years learning Java, Python, Web Development (HTML, CSS, and Javascript), and Swift!
The number one question I am asked through my email or my messages on instagram is:
"How do I start iOS or Website Development?"
It gets to a point where the question is repetitive and annoying, so I decided to write about it. So buckle up because I am about to show you my story and how I have arrived at where I am today!
High School
My story begins in high school (late 2015) where I chose to take a Computer Science class. It was a random decision at the time, I had no programming knowledge and did not know where it would take me. Our first task on the first week was to get an understanding of what programming was and how it worked. Everyone was instructed to create anything in Scratch (a block-based visual programming language) and make it unique. I had created an ice hockey player (a jpeg image) who would move forward or backward based on key press and eventually if he moved forward enough, he would shoot a puck into the hockey net and score. This project was what made me start falling in love with programming because I was able to put whatever I chose together and create a project that would be my unique work.
The course focused on Java (an object-oriented language) after the first week and it would dive deep into objects, methods, and classes. It no longer felt as if I was being at school to get by time but rather it felt like I was experiencing a new opportunity every single day to grow myself. After the course, I built mini applications in my free time then began to pursue website development.
Diving into Website Development
I started about a year later (early 2017) on learning HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). I downloaded an app at the time (SoloLearn) and dove into how websites were created. It was not a great period of design since every website I created looked awful. It took a couple months to get used to tags and styling. I was not good at understanding how to style and create certain sheets to change tags throughout the entire website. It took a while to get the idea of web development down and designing before jumping into any code. All that time I never just watched something and did not practice it on my own. Many people think you can watch someone do something and you will be able to do it easily on your first try without even attempting it after.
New to iOS Development
In the middle of 2018, I bought myself a MacBook Pro 13". I became fond of how iOS applications were made and so I found a free course on Udemy and jumped into iOS development. I fell in love with Swift from the beginning, it was a simple and a fun language. The limits seem almost endless with it. After building a small tap game from the course, I went on to build a business an application (not a large application). It was no where near perfect and had an incredible amount of bugs (this was my first application). It launched in the middle of August with strong retention and user engagement which was very exciting and surprising!
During the time of developing this companies application, I decided I would build an app for myself. I went with the productivity side in which I wanted to build an application that took tasks to a different level. The idea was that users received a score based on each task completion / miss. At the start of September 2018, I dove into designing my idea. It was a quick and small application at the start with focusing on users creating tasks, seeing their scores, and having a global rank board to compete with friends! It took almost two months to design, develop, and launch out Habite which went out on October 24, 2018. The user engagement skyrocketed from the very beginning and it was incredible to watch actual people use a product I built. The app is coming up on four months on February 24, 2019 and it is completely different from what it was before. It now has a white interface, contains a Premium version which includes daily Schedules, Check Lists, Notes, and Goals, and continues to grow everyday!
How you can start
I have seen many people who want to try new things but use minimal effort. That is not going to cut it for web or iOS development. You need to be able to write a lot of code, break down and fix bugs, and practice as much as you can. Udemy is an incredible source for starting. They provide free and paid courses in which teach you almost anything. Teamtreehouse is another great source for learning. I have not looked into it but I have heard great things about it! There are more courses and resources all over the web including Youtube. It just takes a couple minutes to search and find what you want to jump into.
The experience and learning process has blown me away so far. Everyday I am learning something new and practicing my skills doing what I love. The best advice to anyone starting out is start small, learn from others, and build any kind of projects you can. Practice is what will help you in the long run as you grow yourself in a certain language or skill!
If you have any questions or want to reach out, check me out here:
Website: Lzctrl (About, Contact, Portfolio, and Blog Posts)
Instagram: @Lzctrl (Posting daily content of my work)