When I first saw Steve Jobs introduce the Widescreen iPod that ran iPhone OS I never thought this journey was a planned trilogy. But here I am in 2024 embarking on my third trip into learning iOS development. As the saying goes, the third time's the charm! I've learned that with iOS development, and any complex skill, it's more about the journey than the final destination.

My first foray was into the world of Objective-C. Having been doing Java and Web Engineering I saw Objective-C and thought "It's C - I know this!" And I enjoyed wrapping my head around the syntax and trying to build apps with Smalltalk like semantics of sending messages to objects - and I loved the brackets []. I went to the Big Nerd Ranch in Georgia to take the Objective-C course and I'll never forget my class and the ziplining.

The second time around, as a professional iOS developer doing Objective-C 2014 spelled the end of ObjC. So I dove into Swift. The syntax was weird at first but immediately cleaner and I started to understand the design patterns. Although I did miss when they removed the ++ operator.

Now, for my third attempt, I'm diving into modern Swift and SwiftUI. The declarative framework opens up new possibilities for app design. As with any journey, I anticipate ups and downs. Bugs that will seem impossible to solve. A framework that seems perpetually not ready for prime time. Maybe even features that work on one version of iOS but break on another.

But it's overcoming these challenges that make the journey so rewarding. There should always be an outcome or goal to work towards. For me, that outcome is building a profitable app business by creating useful iOS applications.

I don't know if my third journey into iOS development will lead me to that ultimate destination. And that's okay. Because I know that the skills, knowledge, and determination I gain along the way will be the real reward.

If learning iOS development is on your mind, I invite you to join this journey with me! It's a rollercoaster ride filled with coding puzzles, new technologies, and ideas just waiting to be brought to life. Who knows where we'll end up, but we’ll learn a lot along the way.