Ask HN: How long will it take to make an iPhone app w/ no experience?

8 points by Hisoka 15y ago ↗ HN

I'm a programmer. I know Java, Python, Ruby on Rails, Javascript/CSS, but I have no experience developing iPhone apps. I know it uses Objective C, and Cocoa, but other than that, I don't know anything else.

Let's say I want to build an iPhone app that's fairly complex to use, such as an app that keeps track of spending and budgeting. Suppose I have 4 hours per day to work on this. How long do you think it will take me to complete the entire app (from learning Objective C, design, implementation, etc)?

6 comments

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davidbanham 15y ago ↗

You might want to consider leveraging all that knowledge you already have with something like http://www.phonegap.com/

gspyrou 15y ago ↗

Phonegap https://build.phonegap.com/ + JQuery Mobile http://jquerymobile.com/demos/1.0a4.1/

eof 15y ago ↗

two months

seymores 15y ago ↗

6months

aherlambang 15y ago ↗

I'd say 2-4 months, depending on how fast you learn stuff. If you are used with C it makes things much easier

MattBearman 15y ago ↗

Just quoting a time is not much use to anyone, so I'll try to give info about the first app I made:

Working full time with no prior experience in objective c or cocoa, it took me 3 weeks to build an app that is essentially a sign up form used at trade shows on an iPad. It stores all submissions in a sqlite database, and pushes them to a custom API. Also uses a postcode database to find the nearest center to the user's postcode.

Having said all that, I too would recommend phone gap.