We happen to be a full-service freelance consultancy capable of building, testing, and deploying high-quality production-ready apps for the iOS iPhone/iPad platform and yes, we're really based here in Wichita, KS.
Barry, Owner, Senior Consultant
Barry Welch has been developing SaaS apps and business applications in Ruby/Rails since 2005. He has continued to contribute on a regular basis to Rails projects as well as client work. He loves Rails due to the simplicity of the expressive language as well as the power of the large community of contributors to the open-source libraries and tools that are available to solve many common problems.
iOS App Development has historically been a daunting undertaking, and not much has changed about that. While web development has quickly devolved as an engineering effort, mobile has stayed a decidedly Software Engineering-focused arena. Few people who start learning will obtain and retain the mastery necessary to build and support well-engineered, high-quality mobile apps (kids: drink your milk and program every day!). Apple has been moving rapidly to fix the learning curve for iOS development to stem the tide from 3rd party development platforms like RubyMotion and from other mobile platforms like Android, but regardless of the simplicity of the language, the toolset is necessarily large and complex. The result is high demand and low supply of capable software craftsmen. But, there are a few people, even here in Wichita Kansas USA, that can do the requisite work.
{cough cough} It turns out that we do this kind of work {cough cough}.
As with all software engineering efforts, its challenging, but fun. You may be interested to know what it takes to build apps. One such way would be to explain what a day-in-the-life looks like for someone who builds iOS apps for a living. If you're interested in that, you can read more that we wrote about that subject here: Day in the Life of a Typical Software Developer, for now lets just talk about the typical iOS developer.
Typical iOS Developer Requirements
- BS/MS degree in Computer Science
- Solid linux/unix skills
- 3+ years of software development experience
- 2+ years of iOS development
- Have published one or more iOS apps in the app store
- A deep familiarity with Objective-C and Cocoa Touch
- Experience working with iOS frameworks such as Core Data, Core Animation, Core Graphics and Core Text
- Experience with third-party libraries and APIs
- Experience with resources managers sucn as Cocoapods
- Experience with source control, such as Git
- Working knowledge of the general mobile landscape, architectures, trends, and emerging technologies
- Solid understanding of the full mobile development life cycle
Aside: iOS developers get a lot of flak for being Apple Fanbois, because generally to be motivated enough to build software, one must care a bit about the platform they are developing on. But, these guys are just seasoned software engineers who just happen to have chosen to learn iOS development frameworks and tools in order to make a living.
Factoid: According to Robert Half Technology Salary Surveys, the average iOS developer salary is over $100K.
"Ok, where in Wichita, KS can we find a great developer who we can trust to finish our iOS iPhone/iPad projects and who will be worth the money we pay them?"
We happen to be a full-service freelance consultancy capable of building, testing, and deploying high-quality production-ready apps for the iOS iPhone/iPad platform and yes, we're really based here in Wichita, KS. We can take you from having just an idea to a fully built, full-awesome app... and we can do even more than that! We can advise you on trends and best-practices, and steer you to make decisions that will ensure your best chances of success, whether in the marketplace as a paid app, or in your business as a line-of-business utility app. And, we can do all of this at less than half the cost of a traditional design and development house (ask me how).
Call us to schedule your slot in a 1:1 workshop where we'll help you flesh out your idea and give you the insight you need to be successful in having an iOS app build for you. Meetings are held here in Wichita on a regular basis, so call and ask about our workshop today so you don't miss the next opportunity!