Introduction to Programming and App Development

Highlights

• Intro to Programming and App Design and Development Series
• Covers Android / Java and iOS / Swift
• Partly Based on an Upper-division Undergraduate Course at UCLA
• 2 Sample Apps: Yoga Postures App (iOS/Android), Family Group Chat App (Android)
• 14-Week Course (68 Lectures)
• 19+ Hours of Video Instruction
• 400+ Pages of Lectures Slides, Notes, Source Code
• 4 Additional Weeks of Student Project: Online Q/A Support during "Build Your Own App" Project
• Get Started Making Your Own Apps for Fun, as a Freelancer, or to Become a Professional Software Developer
• No Prior Knowledge or Experience Necessary

Overview

This is an introduction to programming and app development class series, partly based on an upper-division undergraduate introductory programming languages course from the Computer Science department at UCLA.

Whether you're interested to learn making apps for fun, would like to start app development as a side-job, or even want to pick up software development as a career, this course will give you the background and practice you need to get started and take off on your own.

This is a 14-week course. We will spend 8 weeks on principles of computer programming. Next we'll learn things specific to designing and developing mobile apps, for both iOS and Android, and we'll finish the course by developing two sample apps together in both these platforms: Yoga Postures App (iOS/Android), Family Group Chat App (Android). 

The course covers concepts from Functional languages, Imperative languages, and Object-Oriented languages, in the context of the following languages: Java for Android, Swift for iOS. Over the course of the two sample apps, you will practice many aspects of app development, including Xcode and Android Studio IDEs, performing in them layout, generating views programmatically, scrollviews, using Google FireBase as a database backend, asynchronous listeners/callbacks for handling events, database exchanges, and much more.

Perquisites 

• No prior knowledge or experience in programming is necessary and all ages are welcome
• To be able to learn and practice programming languages concepts, you only need a computer with internet connection
• To be able to practice making apps on your own, you will need a computer with Xcode (for iOS) or Android Studio (for Android) installed

Sections

• Intro: Introduction to this series
• Week 1: Orientation, Swift Primer, Functional Languages, Functions, Types, Type Inference, Type Checkers
• Week 2: Control, Imperative Languages
• Week 3: Recursion, Data Structures
• Week 4: Data Structures, Optional Types
• Week 5: Scoping, Closures, Interpreted and Compiled Languages, Static and Dynamic Typing
• Week 6: Object Oriented Languages, Interfaces, Inheritance, Polymorphism
• Week 7: Object Oriented Programming Topics
• Week 8: Generics, Concurrency, Asynchronous Computation, Exceptions
• Week 9: Java Primer
• Week 10: App Programming Primer: Layout, Layout in iOS (Sample App 1: Yoga Postures App)
• Week 11: App Programming Primer: Coding in iOS (Sample App1: Yoga Postures App)
• Week 12: App Programming Primer: Layout in Android (Sample App1: Yoga Postures App)
• Week 13: App Programming Primer: Coding in Android (Sample App1: Yoga Postures App)
• Week 14: Sample App 2: Family Group Chat App (Android)
• Outro: Final Lecture, Instructions to build your own app