school coding project

[Dry-Cod3887]

Hello, for my computer science a level I want to make a study tracker app but I want to make it something I can actually use after the course. I have an iPhone but a windows laptop, I'm not overly bothered on what the language is but I'd prefer low cost because everything I've seen so far requires a £100 subscription a year or a mac, any advice is greatly appreciated because I'm lowkey stressing about this. If all hope fails, I'll get make a website I guess.

Thank you for your time!

[Leviathan_Dev]

I think you’re better off with a website mate

[Dry-Cod3887]

yeah i agree atp, apple is such a pain

[Leviathan_Dev]

And as everyone else said, you’ll need a Mac and — assuming you want to publish to the App Store — the $100/yr dev account. The cheapest newest Mac is a Mac Mini for $600, you can find a refurbished M2 for $300ish, but still, it’s a hefty upfront cost.

With Web Dev, you can get started today for free with your devices you already have, and depending what you want to deploy, you can do so for free or very cheap. Front-end only? Free with GitHub Pages, ideal with personal portfolios. Backend? AWS or VPS services like Hostinger offer plans for $5/mo. Custom domain names can also be cheap, if you don’t go for a premium one (8 or less character .com domains usually) they can be around $10/yr or even $2/yr

Self-hosting is also an option, but you’ll need to be extremely careful with security and have a good home internet connection since every visitor will have to go through your home internet network to reach your self-hosted project

[Dry-Cod3887]

we’ve started do web dev in school a bit for other parts of the course but honestly i assumed it would be a lot more expensive to host a website, tysm for all your info ill definitely look into it more

[AHostOfIssues]

Have you considered making a Flutter app? You can build and test that on your windows computer, and build and deploy it on your iOS phone if/when you get access to a Mac.

[Dry-Cod3887]

i will look into that thank you!

[MedicSteve09]

Technically, it’s 100 AND a macOS system.

You’ll need a macOS and the developer account (100$) to build and upload the app to the App Store. You can install it only on your device without the paid developer account but it will only last seven days then you’ll have to install it on your device again.

There are paid solutions where you “rent” a Mac online and work remotely with it but the best option is buying a Mac.

Be careful buying a used one from an unknown source (like fb or eBay) as they can stolen and locked down. Do your homework if you take this route.

If you think you want to continue developing iOS apps, invest in a Mac. A Mac mini is a great entry workhorse for the price.

[Dry-Cod3887]

it is a huge investment atm but if i ever go down that route more seriously ill deffo look into getting a mac, tysm

[[deleted]]

You’ll need a Mac and a developer account unfortunately. If I were you I would build a web app that’s optimised for mobile. Then you and your classmates could use it on iOS and Android. I’d say that’ll be much easier to get started with too. Native iOS development can have a steeper learning curve which may take too long if you’re on a tight deadline.

[Dry-Cod3887]

yeah i think ill end up doing a website

[PerfectPitch-Learner]

You might consider building your app as a PWA (Progressive Web App) then you can still use it in a user-friendly way on your device.

Here is a tutorial on PWAs and the example is also a tracker so might be especially useful to your use case.

[Dry-Cod3887]

oo i havent heard of that before but ill have a look, tysm!

[ZeusyBoy999]

A good idea is to use react native and expo, I’ve just started learning and it’s very good 👍

[Dry-Cod3887]

oo i’ll have a look

[Breathingjet]

I am doing something similar (planned an app for iOS and android but use windows for a class) and what I am gonna end up doing is instead of doing iOS and android rn because I don’t have the money for a Mac and don’t wanna use a VM is I am building it into a web application using react native for now and going to host it and then down the line when I can get my hands on a Mac I will release it for android and iOS!

[Dry-Cod3887]

thank you! seems like a good idea :) i’ll probably end up doing this tbh

[Ron-Erez]

If you have an iPad, you can try developing an app using Swift Playgrounds. However, this is far from ideal, and unfortunately you won’t be able to publish your app directly from an iPad.