MISSION▪X SUMMARY Angus Ewington
When Mr. Barringer first told us about Mission X, I was excited because for months I had been learning online and at home how to program for iOS. I was learning the language, and I had even made myself an Apple Developer account. Mission X really brought me an opportunity to use all of these newfound skills. I just needed to decide what to make an app about, what to gear it towards, and how it would be related to Language Arts.
When I was trying to decide what topic I was going to focus on for my app, I was concentrating on subjects which I had usually had trouble with, like grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Finally I decided that an application that helped students to learn grammar in a reference-like manner would be the best choice.
At this point, I knew the language required for iOS programming (Swift), and I was even in the process of learning a second one (Objective C). I had all of the software I needed to make the app, so I researched various grammar topics which I would focus on in my app. For the first prototype, I decided I would have a relatively small amount of topics just so that I could get the app running smoothly.
I began with a very simple app with only one view, and the longer I worked, the more complex the app became. Eventually I had about five different views, six different code files, and more code than could be read in a single day. I remember that I spent one week just organizing my code so that I could tell what was doing what.
As I worked out the bugs, I also focused more on aesthetics. I am still working on what would be a good background color. I know what I have now looks, well, not what it should look like. I am still playing around with fonts and background colours to see what looks the best.
One problem that came up earlier in the year was an error I call the “SIGABRT of death.” On the first prototype of the app, every time I compiled the application, I got an error at the top of one of the files which looked like:
Error: Exec Thread 1: SIGABRT
I spent three days looking for the source of the problem and reading up about it before I decided that I would actually be saving time by just starting over. On the second prototype, I was way more cautious about what I was typing with, and I added constant logs into the console about what the value of certain variables were.
At one point, I made it so the app was only geared towards iPad users, using iOS 8.2+, but later I made it so that it could be used by iPhone users. However, upon compiling what was going to be my final product for Mission X, I was very happy with the functionality, if not the aesthetics (I’ll probably try to make some very last-minute adjustments to this). So by the time you see my app, if it doesn’t have a dark turquoise background, I will have made changes.
I hope that in the future I will be able to make this app available on the App Store for iOS devices. It will probably be free. However, if the amount of downloads goes really high, I’ll probably make it $0.99. Let me know what you think of my app. Feedback would be much appreciated.
X▪T I P
Make sure to check, check, and double-check whatever you write, especially if what you are writing is software (computers do not look over spelling mistakes).
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