You read it every “Become an App developer”, mostly some kind of computer training centre is offering a week course to become a developer. Well great, now it feels like I went college for 4 years for nothing and you can learn how to create apps in a week.
But no, these courses will teach you how to use the iOS (or Andriod) SDK for a really simple task. At the end of the week everyone is happy and the students are really proud of the App.
Now some of these student got enrolled in the class because they had an idea for a great app. After following the course they retreat to their small desk at home to start coding away on there first great app.
And soon they discover that developing the app is not as easy as the course let them to believe and they start to search on the internet for answers. Often ending up on stackoverflow, where they will just post the question as if it was a code request.
Now most of the new developers will make their greatest mistake of there early career:
post a question describing some requirements that are way to broad or to complex for even junior programmers to understand. And their question is closed, bashed or laughed at by the user of the website.
Don’t let it discourage you, some of them are willing to help. Just break down your question in smaller parts or start simpler.
The thing is, programming for any platform is not something you can learn by just doing some course for a week. Sure you will know some of the components that the framework supplies you with and you will be able to build a simple app.
But in noway are you there, you will need to learn more. Start by learning how to debug your own software, with breakpoints and use the power of the debugger. If you are developing in higher languages, the platforms garbage collector will help you clean up memory, but in lower languages you will have to do this yours self. So read the platforms memory management documentation and stick to it’s rules. Next start learning about software patterns, something most frameworks are full of.
If after al this you still find it to hard then maybe programming is not your thing. But your idea might still be a very good one! Just contact a developer tell them about your idea and they might just be willing to help you realize that great idea into a great app. If you are worried about the developer stealing your idea you can have them sign a contract, there are some good ones around on the internet:NewAppIdea.com sample NDA.
Just keep in mind that being a developer is a profession, not something everyone can do. Most of use studied for many years to get where we are today. I would probably not be able to do your job. But if you are willing to try real hard and put in many hours of studying, you might be able to get that one gem of an app in the AppStore.