From Zero to SwiftUI: How I Built My First App in 4 Months

I have always dreamed of learning Swift and creating apps for iOS, but I never found the motivation to do so. I was scared by the complexity and the learning curve of programming with UIKit and Storyboard. I thought they were too complicated and too boring for me.

But then I discovered SwiftUI, the new framework for building user interfaces for Apple platforms. I was captivated by its simplicity and elegance. I watched some videos and read some articles about it and I was blown away by what it could do. I decided to give it a shot and see if I could learn it and make something with it.

I set myself a goal: to build my first SwiftUI app in 4 months. I had no prior experience or knowledge of programming with Swift, so I started from zero. I downloaded Xcode and opened a new SwiftUI project.

I followed the "100 Days of SwiftUI", a free course by Paul Hudson that taught me the basics of SwiftUI and Swift. I learned how to use SwiftUI's declarative syntax to create the user interface components, such as buttons, lists, text fields and navigation bars. I also learned how to use some of the built-in features of SwiftUI, such as animations, transitions, gestures and dark mode. This free course gave me everything that I needed to build a stunning app from scratch. This course was so good that I decided to buy other Swift books from the author. Thank you Paul for creating such a great course! (Here is the course link: https://www.hackingwithswift.com/100/swiftui)

I decided to build a simple and elegant mood tracking app that syncs across all your iOS devices. I called it MoodUp. I wanted to make it easy and intuitive for users to track and analyze their moods anytime, anywhere.

I used CloudKit, a cloud service that provides database and asset storage for apps, to store and sync the mood data. I learned how to use CloudKit's APIs to create, update, delete and fetch records from the cloud database.

After 4 months of hard work, learning and fun, I finally finished my first SwiftUI app. I was proud of what I had achieved and eager to share it with the world. However, my app is still in pre-order mode and won't be available until July 7th. This is because I wanted to make sure that everything works smoothly and there are no major bugs or issues before releasing it to the public.

I submitted my app to the App Store for review and waited for approval.

A few days later, I received an email from Apple saying that my app was approved and ready for pre-order. I was overjoyed and excited with tears. I launched my app on the App Store and announced it here on Hacker News, hoping to get some attention and feedback from the community.

That's how I went from zero to SwiftUI and built my first app in 4 months. It was a challenging but rewarding journey that taught me a lot about SwiftUI, Swift, CloudKit and app development in general. I hope you enjoyed reading my story and maybe got inspired to start your own SwiftUI project.

If you want to check out my app, you can pre-order it for free from the App Store here:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/moodup-breeze-mental-health/id6450100126

Please upvote and pre-order the app for free if you like it because as a small indie developer, I need your support.

Thank you for reading!