Ten years ago I moved my first steps developing apps for Apple platforms. Like many others, I had the dream to become an indie developer, make my own apps and be independent one day. It all started when I saw a presentation about being an indie developer by Will Shipley. I shared it with a friend and soon he came back to me with an idea for a Mac app (the iPhone still didn’t exist back then). At that time he was trying to follow the Zone Diet, which is a pretty complicated diet requiring a lot of calculations. So he though that an app to help people follow that diet would be a good business idea.
When I was in university, I had to take a course called “Foundations of computer science”. Since this course was placed in the second trimester of the first year, it was an immediate roadblock for many people. Unlike others, I found the course to be very easy and passed the exam quickly with the maximum grade, with almost no studying. I am not saying this to brag, but I think there is an important lesson there.
View controllers have a central role in iOS apps and build the skeleton of every app you make. This is because each screen of the app is represented by a single view controller. Because of this central role they have, they are at the center of a lot of activity and perform many duties during their lifetime.
A couple of years ago a company hired me for a last moment rescue of an app they were developing for a client of theirs. After months of development the app was late and full of bugs. The goal was fix as many bugs as possible in one week, before we delivered the app to the final client. This was not the first time I had to rescue a project and probably will not be the last. Any freelancer can tell you that, as deadlines get closer, companies sometimes bring in extra power to be able to meet them. As I poked around the code it became clearer and clearer what the source of the problem was.
