I had to put my ’learn Swift’ project on the backburner for the last few weeks but I’m catching up again now we have a few festive days of freedom. That’s what most people do, right? Spend Christmas afternoon digesting mince pies and learning how to code?

Last time I wrote about finishing up the first course on Ray Wenderlich’s iOS path and moving on to the second which was more about Swift. I’ll admit, I found that one a touch harder than I was expecting - some of the concepts seemed a bit unnecessary for this stage in the course (still being a total beginner), and they also used not-so-simple maths concepts as a way to demonstrate some of the coding tricks. It was hard to relate, so I had to keep stopping and pausing and thinking about what it would mean if I was making my own app.

Thankfully, the fact that I could see the issues with what I was learning actually gave me confidence that I’m getting a good grounding in the Swift language. And I have to keep remembering that it’s not about retaining all the information first time through. It’s about knowing what is possible and being able to reference back to it when you need it.

So, now I’m on the third course wherein we are building a to do list app. The number of times have I written about to do list apps hoping that I’ve found the new one that will fix all my problems and inevitably failing to keep up the habit of using it! Now, I’m writing my own! Okay, it’s a pretty simple app with limited features, but it brings to life the concept of having a problem in your own life and fixing it.

How many times do you hear the story of app developers coming up with ideas just because they had a need in their own life? Now I’m starting to think about what things could work more smoothly in my life and what kind of app I could make to help. There are a lot of apps out there covering all manner of topics and genres, but hey, there’s always room for one more, right?