How to Code an iPhone app similar to Tumblr?

whitegirlbkcvrs · Mar 31, 2014

Hi Everyone,

This is my first time posting to this thread. My WIP is about two high school seniors that decide to create their own phone app (similar to Tumblr) to release gossip and post photos/videos about fellow students. One of my CPs suggested I add a scene about coding.

I have researched instructables.com about how to code an app for iPhone and have learned about XCode and sketching out the app screens and things like that, but is their specific terminology that could be useful and broken down into layman's terms during a conversation between my two MC's?

I'm finding that most website's I've found skip over the nitty gritty!

Thank you so much for your help!

kuwisdelu · Mar 31, 2014

Read something introductory on object-oriented programming.

That should give you a high-level overview with enough technical terms to toss around. It's really hard to have any idea where to start without knowing anything about your background. How big of a part is this going to play in your story? Do you know what classes, methods, API, GUI, etc., are?

I'd also ask why they don't just use any of the existing hundreds of social media sites.

whitegirlbkcvrs · Apr 1, 2014

kuwisdelu said:
Read something introductory on object-oriented programming.

That should give you a high-level overview with enough technical terms to toss around. It's really hard to have any idea where to start without knowing anything about your background. How big of a part is this going to play in your story? Do you know what classes, methods, API, GUI, etc., are?

I'd also ask why they don't just use any of the existing hundreds of social media sites.

Thank you! The app has become backstory, but I want to explain to readers how they created it, so they can get a better sense of how it works. I don't want to use existing social media because I don't want to make it seem dated if it gets published.

kuwisdelu · Apr 1, 2014

whitegirlbkcvrs said:
I don't want to use existing social media because I don't want to make it seem dated if it gets published.

You're still dating it by making it specifically an iPhone app.

There's an episode of The Big Bang Theory where they create an iPhone app, and even they don't really go into much detail except talking about the layout. (Although you can see the Cocoa classes they intend to use labeled on their whiteboard, but they never name them.)

wendymarlowe · Apr 1, 2014

I was friends in high school with one of the guys who created Tumblr. It's not something you just do on a whim. (Took him and a half-dozen other guys, all computer geniuses, working their tails off to create it - then a HUGE stroke of luck for it to suddenly become big.)

It's not hard to write an app, if you know how to program. It is hard to write a GOOD one.

whitegirlbkcvrs · Apr 1, 2014

kuwisdelu said:
You're still dating it by making it specifically an iPhone app.

There's an episode of The Big Bang Theory where they create an iPhone app, and even they don't really go into much detail except talking about the layout. (Although you can see the Cocoa classes they intend to use labeled on their whiteboard, but they never name them.)

I don't say in my story that it's specifically an iPhone app I just call it a phone app and say that it's "an exclusively mobile app with a constant feed of images, videos, and text posts."

whitegirlbkcvrs · Apr 1, 2014

wendymarlowe said:
I was friends in high school with one of the guys who created Tumblr. It's not something you just do on a whim. (Took him and a half-dozen other guys, all computer geniuses, working their tails off to create it - then a HUGE stroke of luck for it to suddenly become big.)

It's not hard to write an app, if you know how to program. It is hard to write a GOOD one.

I know Rome wasn't built in a day, one of my MC's is already very skilled at coding. I just want the other character to be able to explain things in Layman's terms to readers who don't want to be bogged down with tech speak.

BDSEmpire · Apr 2, 2014

In layman's terms, they bleep the bloop with a side order of bleepbloop. Then there is the complicated stuff that goes whoosh zing whang and there you have it - a git repository full of carefully managed objective-C that is compiling smoothly into an app for iOS 7 and higher. Regression testing shows it to be relatively bug free and the AJAX libraries are linking up to the server nicely. Looks like we've got a winner here boys.

Some light reading:
http://www.ajaxonomy.com/2008/xml/web-services-part-1-soap-vs-rest
https://developer.apple.com/library/iOS/referencelibrary/GettingStarted/RoadMapiOS/index.html

Frankly, a skilled coder isn't likely to be able to explain what they are doing to a layman and wouldn't want to. They are busy thinking about lovely things like classes and objects and interfaces and message passing and how to unmangle the horrid mess of hacks they had to do to get this pile of junk up and staggering into life. They may be refactoring their own code to clean up earlier efforts or working on toolkits to make interacting with the codebase easier.

This project is something that a couple young hotshots could reasonably put together but they may find that they need to bring in a third person to help polish up the interface so that human beings can understand it. Programmers are rarely human interface designers.

As a reader, I'm okay with a lot of handwaving with regards to tech. Stuff just happens and technical people do tricky things to make it work. As a computer guy myself, I laugh out loud and get outraged when reading a non-tech's approximation of this stuff. It sticks out like a sore thumb and I'd have rather read that the super genius did something tricky and AHA it worked than someone trying their best to talk about them bash scripting their interwebs while conflabulating the cat script to make all the unixes go hackwise. I can spot a phony right away and so can anyone else who works with computers. This isn't to discourage you from writing about the topic, but please please spend the time researching the activities or pick up programming as a hobby. Even at a very basic level it will teach you a ton of the concepts that will make your writing more authentic, and it's fun!

Good luck!

JimmyB27 · Apr 3, 2014

whitegirlbkcvrs said:
I don't want to use existing social media because I don't want to make it seem dated if it gets published.

whitegirlbkcvrs said:
I don't say in my story that it's specifically an iPhone app I just call it a phone app and say that it's "an exclusively mobile app with a constant feed of images, videos, and text posts."

If you can avoid dropping the name 'iPhone' to avoid dating your story, why not just drop the name 'Tumblr' in the same way. You aren't having them build a phone from scratch, why have them build an app, if avoiding dating your story is the only purpose of them doing so?

whitegirlbkcvrs · Apr 5, 2014

JimmyB27 said:
If you can avoid dropping the name 'iPhone' to avoid dating your story, why not just drop the name 'Tumblr' in the same way. You aren't having them build a phone from scratch, why have them build an app, if avoiding dating your story is the only purpose of them doing so?

I haven't used "Tumblr" at all I quoted what I had wrote. They're building an app to release information about other students it's the catalyst in the story for a whole bunch of problems.

whitegirlbkcvrs · Apr 5, 2014

BDSEmpire said:
In layman's terms, they bleep the bloop with a side order of bleepbloop. Then there is the complicated stuff that goes whoosh zing whang and there you have it - a git repository full of carefully managed objective-C that is compiling smoothly into an app for iOS 7 and higher. Regression testing shows it to be relatively bug free and the AJAX libraries are linking up to the server nicely. Looks like we've got a winner here boys.

Some light reading:
http://www.ajaxonomy.com/2008/xml/web-services-part-1-soap-vs-rest
https://developer.apple.com/library/iOS/referencelibrary/GettingStarted/RoadMapiOS/index.html

Frankly, a skilled coder isn't likely to be able to explain what they are doing to a layman and wouldn't want to. They are busy thinking about lovely things like classes and objects and interfaces and message passing and how to unmangle the horrid mess of hacks they had to do to get this pile of junk up and staggering into life. They may be refactoring their own code to clean up earlier efforts or working on toolkits to make interacting with the codebase easier.

This project is something that a couple young hotshots could reasonably put together but they may find that they need to bring in a third person to help polish up the interface so that human beings can understand it. Programmers are rarely human interface designers.

As a reader, I'm okay with a lot of handwaving with regards to tech. Stuff just happens and technical people do tricky things to make it work. As a computer guy myself, I laugh out loud and get outraged when reading a non-tech's approximation of this stuff. It sticks out like a sore thumb and I'd have rather read that the super genius did something tricky and AHA it worked than someone trying their best to talk about them bash scripting their interwebs while conflabulating the cat script to make all the unixes go hackwise. I can spot a phony right away and so can anyone else who works with computers. This isn't to discourage you from writing about the topic, but please please spend the time researching the activities or pick up programming as a hobby. Even at a very basic level it will teach you a ton of the concepts that will make your writing more authentic, and it's fun!

Good luck!

THANK YOU!!! This was really helpful!

How to Code an iPhone app similar to Tumblr?

whitegirlbkcvrs

kuwisdelu

Revolutionize the World

whitegirlbkcvrs

kuwisdelu

Revolutionize the World

wendymarlowe

writer, mother, geek

whitegirlbkcvrs

whitegirlbkcvrs

BDSEmpire

Kindly Bumpkin

JimmyB27

Hoopy frood

whitegirlbkcvrs

whitegirlbkcvrs