iOS Tweet a Day

Recent iOS grad Parker Donat decided when he started his bootcamp journey that he would document his experience each day with a tweet. Reading through the tweets, you can see both the growth and challenges he faced as he progresses through the course. We spoke with Parker about his experience and highlighted some of his tweets below.

If you’re considering taking our iOS course, you should check out Parker’s full Twitter timeline to sneak a peek into the DevMountain experience.

What was your background before DevMountain?

I come from a Social Media and Content Marketing background. I really liked what I did but couldn’t see myself doing Social my for my whole career. I was already tinkering with code in my free time and felt like a bootcamp would help me learn what I needed to know.

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Parker Donat @parkerdonat

Day 47 @DevMtn I am always coding in the day and before bed I am looking up code. Good job #DevMtn. #LifeOfDev

7:14 PM – Mar 20, 2016

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What made you decide to enroll in the iOS program?

I have always been interested in iOS development, but what really helped me was my fiancé (now wife) was enrolled in the Part-Time Web class and she took me to her Demo Night. I talked to her for months about how I wanted to do the full-time iOS class. That’s what really made me want to get enrolled. The other thing that helped choose iOS was I liked my job but wanted to create more opportunities for me and my family. So I talked to my boss and felt like it was the right time to make a career change.

Parker Donat @parkerdonat

Day 11 @DevMtn: How do you make your work as good as your ambitions as a developer? WATCH THIS: http://bit.ly/1oIMEBK #swift #DevMtnTweet

12:07 PM – Feb 11, 2016

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UPDATE: Thanks for all your kind words guys! It’s quite overwhelming to see this shared and retweeted all over! All sins typographic in nature have been amended,…

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Replies

1 Retweet

1 like

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How come you decided to do a tweet about each day of the program?

At first, I just thought it was a cool idea looking at it from a Content Marketing background. But then after a week or so I got responses from people I didn’t know and I thought “I should keep tweeting, not only for me but for other people to see what I was learning.” Now that my cohort is over, I’m already thinking of a new tweet-a-day concept like #iOSTweetADay or #iOSLearning. If you have any ideas, send me a tweet.

Were there any common threads you found with your tweets?

Yes, there is definitely a common thread in all these tweets–it’s that I’m a coding newbie. All my tweets were about what I was discovering or relearning in regards to Swift code. I’m still learning and want to keep learning code. And looking back on my tweets, it doesn’t give it justice for DevMountain because there were so many other things I learned in class that a tweet just couldn’t communicate. Honestly, I regret not blogging about my whole experience but there was just no time to do it in a full-time bootcamp like this.

What is your best advice for anyone thinking about becoming an iOS dev?

While tweeting everyday was helpful for me, I recommend coding in your free time :). Really, the best advice I can give for anyone thinking about becoming an iOS developer is to simply make a conscious decision to LOVE CODING! Because you have to love the iOS platform, love the amazing things you can do in Swift, and love making awesome apps OR… you may never make the leap to becoming a good developer.

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Parker Donat @parkerdonat

Day91 @DevMtn I love sports quotes that can be applied to coding, like this one from Pele.

6:44 AM – May 2, 2016

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What is your best advice for anyone learning to code?

The best advice I have if you want to learn code is what I learned on day 78 in my class: Practice typing a block of code, deleting it, and doing it from memory. Keep doing that until you can do all of it from memory. That advice seriously helped me more than anything else.

Why do a tweet a day?

Why not do a tweet a day? I’ve been able to make new connections with awesome iOS developers, retain the things I learned in class, and (best of all) it pushed me to learn something new everyday.