views:

198

answers:

3

Hello everyone, how long do you guys think it should take to develop an app similar to pocketMoney? This is my first iPhone App and my Objective-c knowledge is pretty much academic, I'm the only developer, I had never touched Core Data or Core Animation before.

A: 

For your first iPhone app I'd try something much simpler. You don't have to make it to the app store (but if it does something worthwhile why not). An experienced dev could probably make pocketMoney in around a week of work. Possibly less as there are people who do these 24 or 48 hour long build time for apps. If you know what you are doing it isn't bad to do something like pocketMoney. The thing that takes the time is testing every feature you can, writing your unit testing (preferably as you go), and tracking down those random bugs. Including all of those things I'd say you would need a few weeks to do all that for a 1 person team. Games you can sometimes make fast, but specially with financial apps you don't want bugs...

jamone
Definitely agree that you should start with something smaller at first, to pick up the basics and build up iPhone development workflow experience. I'd recommend writing a basic calculator app or Twitter client for starters, even if you have no intention of releasing it to the app store. I'm new to app development myself and have been cutting my teeth on a calculator project (http://github.com/jschuur/jnumbers/ if you're curious)
Joost Schuur
Well in my case I'm an employee and actually the app is coming up nicely but since the beginning of the design phase and the brainstorm has been like 3 months and my boss is asking me for a deadline. I have been programming for like 2 months and I'm about to end with the Core Data stuff and the basic layout. What is missing is the art and customization (color palette, custom cells, icons) but that is the graphic designer work ...
Jigzat
... core animation to do some reports charts and a couple of animations, localization and some multithread stuff. The problem is that Core Animation and multithreading is brand new stuff for me
Jigzat
What has been taking me so much time is that I have to build and run the App constantly to see the effect of something, like resizing views changing the subviews stack and things like that.
Jigzat
A: 

Much longer than a week. If you are trying to duplicate all of pocketmoneys features.

Hardy Macia
A: 

Depends on:

  1. How much money you have?
  2. What kind of quality you want?

Time = Quality + Money

fuzzy lollipop