SOLVED: Should I take CS50 before 100 days of swift? or After?

	@bichar Jun '24 I have about 6 months and my goal is to be at somewhat a decent level to code my own projects and be independent. I'm completely new. I plan on coding 7 hrs a day 6 days a week. I get plenty of sleep, exercise and social life with this schedule so its not a problem for me. Plus I'm fairly young. My goals are to primarily be an iOS developer only doing iOS and maybe learn a backend framework like Ruby on Rails to help my ability to code much more complex apps. I was thinking of doing CS50x but I really don't wish to learn a bunch of things I'll never use in my day to day situation. I just want to be a good programmer to be able to develop my own projects. I know I won't be an expert in this short time span but atleast I hope to be on the path of a good junior developer for next year. So please help! Should I just do CS50X to build the foundation? Or would a good CS Book just be enough and I should take 100 days of swift? Your suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
	@barnettsab HWS+ Jun '24 Opinions are going to vary depending on individuals experience. I have been programming for 47 years and have no formal CS qualifications, so can attest to the fact that its not a barrier to becomming a programmer if you do not have a CS degree. That said, knowing something about CS is always going to be useful. Were I in your position, I would start with 100 Dyas of Swift, follow up with 100 Days of SwiftUI. Along side that, be working on a side project. When you start the project, you are going to struggle but, as you learn more, it should get easier. All the learning in the world is of no use if you dont apply it to a real world application. It's the struggle to achieve things that cements your learning. I'm not saying don't learn CS. It will be useful as you progress. However, as a junior developer you are more likely to be presented with a specification to follow which will deal with how the problem should be solved. Properly understanding Swift is going to be your most valuable skill. Also learn about patterns (I think Paulhas a book on this) as you are likely to be quizzed on patterns in an interview. Just my opinion as a very old man. 1
	@bichar Jul '24 Thank you so much !! This has given me alot of comfort knowing that I'm not missing out so much as I want to prioritize the highest leverage activity I can. And it seems like my intuition about just going 100 days of swift was correct, so thank you!
	@bobstern Jul '24 A minor correction to @barnettsab's excellent advice: 100 Days of SwiftUI completely supersedes 100 Days of Swift, so there is no need to study the latter. The first several lessons are identical for both. The difference is that the SwiftUI version uses the Swift's modern framework of creating a user interface, whereas the Swift version uses the older user interface framework (UIKit) that was developed long before Swift and is pointless to learn nowadays. CS50x would be a waste of time. It teaches the C language which is harder to learn than Swift and would not help you learn Swift. 100 Days of SwiftUI is well designed for a complete programming novice. If some programming concepts don’t make intuitive sense to you, please don’t be embarrassed to ask here what the purpose of something is or why it's taught a certain way. We're a friendly, helpful group! 1
	@bichar Jul '24 Thanks so much for your input @bobstern! I really appreciate it, as it further confirms that my time would be better spent focusing on Swift instead!

Reply to this topic…

You need to create an account or log in to reply.

All interactions here are governed by our code of conduct.