How to make an App for Android or iOS | Ultimate Guide (2021)

Introduction

How to make an app is a question that will attract distinct answers from different individuals, and is a very broad and burning stream to get skilled in, in the present times.

To be fairly honest, there is no hard and fast schematic that you can adapt to become a successful app developer. You can go through tons of theory, to begin with, or try the learn-as-you-go approach, because one way or another, it will boil down to how dedicated you are in pursuing it.

Not just that, there are several sub-domains of this category like Android and iOS app development, front end and back end development, so on and so forth, so the ways to go about it really depends on the area of your interest and how you want to approach it. 

In this article , we are gonna guide you through the steps on how you can learn to make an app. Rest is up to you.

Let’s Start.

Languages Preferred

There are a host of programming languages that you can use to code your applications, like Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, and C++. All of these work fairly well and have environments that support coding of applications in at least one of these languages. 

However, one very up and coming language which is also recognised by Google for learning and pursuing app development is Kotlin.

This new open-source language takes in the features of the existing languages and builds new ones on top of those to provide for a very easy-to-learn environment for building applications.

Although it would be restricting and unfair to call any 1 language the superlative best for app development, the ones mentioned here are some of the most popular and widely used ones for the same and would be a really starting ground for you to get into the arena of development.

How to get started?

As mentioned earlier, there is no specific algorithm to learn app development and it depends on how you want to go about it. However, some of the more mundane and effective ways to go about this are as follows –

Online Courses

One of the better ways to learn app development, or learn any new skill for that matter, is by taking an online course on that subject.

More often than not, these start with an introduction that clears any misconceptions you might still have about the subject after which a systematic study helps you understand the subject really well.

Moreover, these courses are often offered by prestigious universities and professionals hailing for the pertinent streams which make any material taught to be extremely reliable, along with being tailored to suit your needs.

You can pause, slow, rewind, and repeat the material as many times you need to understand the concepts, and that coupled with the huge collection of good online courses make this a really good place to start.

YouTube

Even though this might seem like a repetition of the previous point, it is not, majorly for the reason that content on YouTube is free to view and learn from.

Moreover, the amount of content there is immense, with some really great YouTubers who are really great at what they teach and how they do it.

Being an engineering student, I can never discount the effectiveness of teachers on YouTube because let’s be honest, we have all studied from Neso Academy videos before our semesters after failing to understand a single word from the class notes, and somehow managed to grasp every single concept.

Similarly for learning app development, YouTube is one of the best resources to dive into.

Offline Training

Although the pandemic and the generally busy lifestyles of today’s day and age make this difficult, there is nothing like a real like hands-on training to get started with developing applications.

I remember when an app development company visited my school and offered a bunch of high school students a free session of learning app development. Going into the workshop I had knowledge of nothing more than the school curriculum Java, and two hours later I had created the first application that I could run on my phone to pop a floating message.

And not just me, but almost everybody in that room was able to go home with an application on his phone which he created.

So, imagine if a high school kid with no prior experience and very limited programming knowledge can learn it in a few hours, how much would a passionate learner benefit from one of these workshops.

It is as they say – You hear and you forget, you see and you remember, you do and you understand.

Apart from this, you can go directly into creating your first application and learning the How-Tos along the way.

There a ton of free open-source softwares like PhoneGap and Flutter which provide for a platform to create your first application because of their dependence on C, C++, HTML, JavaScript, and their implementation of a single codebase for apps across platforms.

You can always make sure of the reading and open-source code available online to learn to write clean and reliable code from, or just Google, and learn every step along the way to becoming a successful application developer!

Making Google your best friend, can be really helpful if you want to learn any skill on your own.

Benefits of App Development

The benefits of becoming a developer and making your own applications are many, some of which are listed below.

You can do it on your own

Making applications do not require external help because once you are proficient with the tools that are required for it you can code your own application, release it on the app stores, and earn money from it – all by yourself.

Anywhere, anytime

App development, unlike a lot of other things, is one of those things that you can pursue along with your college education or even a day job.

If you are freelancing, you can code your app after work and as long as you meet the deadlines and quality of the product required, you will be appreciated and get paid.

Flexibility and ease of learning

App development provides for a very flexible and custom methodology of acquiring the skill set, and at no real cost. You can make use of the enormous free online resources to gain the knowledge and then put it to use.

Also, because it does not restrict the user to choose a specific language, it is a comparatively easier skill to obtain as well. 

Developer specific implementation

One of the best features of application development is how developer-friendly the whole thing is.

When a developer is contracted to build an application, they are only presented with what the functionality of the app is supposed to be and across what platforms it is supposed to run.

The choice of which IDE to use to build the app, the language to code it in – all lies with the developer, and because of this very reason more and more people can get involved and start making their own applications with little to no restraints.

iOS vs Android App Development 

Application development for iOS is very different compared to Android, mainly because of the following reasons –

Language Used

Android app developers usually rely on Java or Kotlin whereas iOS has its proprietary language – Swift. Even though Swift is fairly new and developers still use Objective-C for iOS app development as well, the languages are easier to learn and require lesser lines of code to work.

Complexity

Coming to the complexity of code required to build a successful application, iOS wins again because of the very limited hardware and devices Apple releases compared to the immense number of devices with varied specifications when it comes to Android.

As a result, developers have to pay attention to detail and spend a chunk of time on testing and debugging.

Target Audience

It would not come as any surprise that the number of android users globally far outnumber their iOS counterparts, because of which the application only reaches and caters to a specific audience. Therefore, if the aim is to appeal to more users worldwide, Android is the platform to go with.

The flexibility of Features

Android, being an open-source operating system provides for more features and customizations to incorporate within your app which results in fewer restrictions while developing. This, in turn, would result in an app more to your liking, and with more functionality. 

Revenue Generation

Apple devices are, in general, the more expensive when compared with android phones which means the consumer base is richer. This translates to more subscriptions and payments to premium versions of applications, resulting in greater revenue generation.

Moreover, because iOS is not open-source, it is also very difficult to hack into and mod apps for their premium versions, again resulting in more purchases being made towards ad-free and/or premium versions.

This essentially means that if you want to earn more money, iOS would be your best bet even though the huge disparity of user numbers cannot be neglected in this scenario too.

Note: Well though we discussed that the languages used are different, upcoming languages like flutter are slowly and steadily narrowing the Gap.

In flutter with a few tweaks, here and there, you can get the same app on both the platforms with a single piece of code. This is set to improve even further, as development proceeds in the near future.

Conclusion

Application development as a profession has seen a huge surge in interest in recent years, and it continues to grow as an industry.

With the ever-developing software and technology, cross-platform application development environments have also come into existence which let you create an application for both android and iOS with the same codebase.

Even though this is extremely practical, and improves efficiency by leaps and bounds, it comes with its set of cons.

Especially in the form of restrictions, which are on what features you can use in your applications because any feature which is exclusive to one operating system cannot be implemented if the codebase is cross-platform.

Until such software is developed which takes care of major issues like this for cross-platform development, we have to stick to developing applications for one system at a time and when we do that, we have to make an informed decision as to which platform that should be. 

All said and done, the benefits and perks of app development cannot be taken lightly, because this is by far one of the most lucrative industries to get into in today’s times.

Not only are you not limited by one employer or a programming language, but you are also independent of learning, implementation, and get to decide your own work hours – all this while earning plenty.

If this is not one of THE professions to get into, one of the skills to build today, I do not know what is. 

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