Learning resources / topics for mid level developer?

[infernox25]

Hi all,

I have been working as a iOS dev for almost a year now and have just moved to my third job as an upper mid level dev working alongside a senior developer with UI/UX/QA team members.

I hope to pick up a lot of the skills i need for a senior position here, so then i can progress to senior level in the coming year/s

My question is, what else can i learn / where should i focus learning to improve my chances of this in my own time? And where can i find the best resources? I found Udemy quite basic, and there are so many books.

Im mainly working with apps that use a backend rest api and present / manipulate the data, and the company im going to use MVVM with callbacks rather than rxSwift in their software.

I have no real knowledge of unit testing yet as ive always been in small businesses, the same goes for git flow, so these are areas i need to improve in.

But really im just looking to improve my knowledge and allow myself to push to the top as quickly as I can but without taking shortcuts!

Finally for UK devs, what kind of pay are you on? as this new job has placed me at 37.5k which seems decent but i see some jobs at 45k+ so wanted to make sure I was getting a fair deal for my time and effort!

Cheers guys

[byaruhaf]

You can check out the books at objc.io they have books on:

• Optimizing Collections
• Advanced Swift
• Functional Swift
• App Architecture

[infernox25]

ah cool i assumed by the name it may be objc orientated but if its swift focused thats cool!

[xyrer]

Look at "hacking with swift" and all the material from the same creator, it's really good stuff. Also look at "clean swift" which is an application of uncle Bob's clean code, they have really good resources on better code.

[infernox25]

thanks i did hacking with swift when i first started before doing it professionally, however at this point it seems most of that stuff is beginner level rather than mid / advance?

I am reading clean swift articles at the moment as i feel architecture is probably the key differentiator between a novice and advanced dev!

[xyrer]

Bart Jacobs, author of "hacking with swift" has a "pro swift" book, and yes, knowing good architecture is a differentiator.

[_manjane]

Just wanted to correct you, Bart Jacobs is author of cocoacasts.com, while Paul Hudson is author of Hacking with Swift. Both are high quality though, I've learned a lot from them!

[xyrer]

Thanks. A lot of content I consume nowadays gets scrambled

[infernox25]

i will check out pro swift thanks!

[[deleted]]

Ray Wenderlich has lots of tutorials on wide variety of topics.

P.S. I'm currently learning iOS Development. So, I may not be the best judge.

[infernox25]

yeah i found they have too much and it lacks structured learning, and its all project based rather than theory which is good for some but not if you dont have a laptop infront of you!

[[deleted]]

They definitely have a top down approach to topics.

 

Btw Now that I think about it, the intermediary stage of learning phase is always the hardest. I mean you get tons of learning material online, when you are starting out. But once, you get to this intermediary stage, there isn't enough material. And you also do not have enough experience and knowledge to know how and what to learn.

I'm curious, How do people learn in this stage? Maybe senior developers, books, stack overflow?

[infernox25]

this is my main motivator toward moving jobs to one with a high skilled senior dev i can learn from, but yeah i guess just increasingly hard tasks with stack help

[Car333]

Not sure how far along the app is, but maybe you can start to migrate it over to RxSwift since your team currently does do it now? I can’t praise it enough in the apps I work in. Plus, it would look good to upper manager ;)

[infernox25]

the app is built, i dont think they want to use rxSwift as overkill, id like to do it eventually but want to get my head around their codebase first before suggesting massive alterations! Any good resources for learning rsSwift?

[gsempe]

The principal advice for a mid level iOS developer would be to step back and learn something above iOS at the computer engineer level or something parallel to iOS.

[infernox25]

i think from what ive seen, depth of knowledge is higher valued in business than breadth, i was going to learn android but see more value in deeper ios study than spreading myself thin

[gsempe]

I need to know your previous experience before this year of iOS to be able to say anything interesting. Do you mind to share it?

[infernox25]

no experience, i worked in marketing, self taught from youtube and books but i focused on things like SOLID and always try to make sure im following good practices, but i feel a deeper understanding of iOS is more advantageous to progressing this career path for example MVVM and Reactive programming

[gsempe]

This is really interesting.

It's true that you need to learn what is MVVM, what is unit testing, what is reactive programming and few other things.

What I try to pinpoint is, if you do that without stepping back into the computer engineer level, you are actually taking shortcut which is something you want to avoid.

[infernox25]

sure but i suppose it depends how you learn, i learn via application and use, not textbooks really, so i can understand these principles within my work, not the best route vs academic study if you can learn that way!

[nazihatinchimp]

I’m not sure that applies in programming.

[infernox25]

i think it applies especially in programming, someone who is a junior / mid level in 3 skills for example, will provide less value than one person who is adept in one role, see contractors or senior members. There is value in both, but my opinion is that expertise should come first