Thursday, January 12, 2012

How to get a mobile phone developer job - Part 3 #learnmobile

I was asked to write up my recommendations for learning mobile. This is Part Three. Part One is here and Part Two is here. In this part I give you some ideas for simple mobile apps. Please leave ideas for other simple apps in comments.


Next round. You'll have to write some code. To do so you'll need to learn a computer language, storing data and about browser styles. For mobile you need to learn some JavaScript.
eloquentjavascript.net - to this point everything has been fairly easy. Learning JavaScript is the one requirement for any mobile app job. You could buy books or pay for courses, but one of the best books is free: Eloquent JavaScript. And if you use the web version, it is interactive. Highly recommended. (Update: Stackoverflow no longer has other recommendations. This was recommended.)
json - you'll often have to read or store data in your JavaScript apps. Json is the format for data in JavaScript. You should master how to read and create Json. It is fairly simple, but it may take a while to grok it. After you do, you may be struck at the beauty of it. Using json in your early projects is a good way to master it.
css and HTML5 - you'll have to know basic CSS in a mobile job. Few people know CSS very well - you need to know the basics like setting colors. Move on from there to HTML5. 20 sites to help you.
Again, don't be overwhelmed. Just learn what you need to get your weekly mobile app published. You don't need dancing, modern fonts to make your app useful. Getting your first JavaScript Ajax code to read a Json file and display it in your HTML page will be thrilling.

There are lots of different ways to learn how to code. Here are a couple to consider.
codeyear - sign up to get weekly emails to help you learn to code. This is the only service that I have not personally used, but it backed by some high profile organizations. Thousands have signed up.
lifehacker - the learn to code series is short set of articles to teach you the basics. It makes it look less overwhelming than the long books.
jquery - I've recommend jquerymobile without specifically mentioning jquery. It is helpful to learn basic jquery stuff like Ajax and html(), but before learning basic javascript first is required. The jquery website recommend some tutorials.
Do a search if you want to find others. Don't concentrate on mastering JavaScript, CSS, HTML for jQuery. These are just tools to help create that weekly web app.

Just keep at it everyday. Everyday use git. Everyday write some code from a tutorial or your own project using git and github. Everyday blog about what tutorials you read, what you coded and what you learned. Everyday tweet about your blog post or highlight a good tutorial. Some days you may have several blog post and tweets. Everyday.

There is a fourth part about recommend daily reading. 

Intro | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

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