Welcome to appsandbiscuits

I’m Andy and I’ve created appsandbiscuits to help people who’ve never built an app, to build an app! It’s for complete beginners, so we start right at the beginning and work our way up, through a series of guides and tutorials.

Why?

I’m a professional developer — I work for an innovation team in a large bank and I also build my own apps at home. Last year I started giving an app development course to 3rd level business and marketing students, teaching them how to make iOS or Android apps. I was delighted (but not surprised) at the amount of students, all non-technical, who wanted to build an app; who had a business idea but just lacked any development experience to take it further.

Appsandbiscuits is the next natural step — an online resource that will supplement my course (we started the 2nd run late last year) but also be for anyone else who comes across it.

Why learn to build apps?

The greatest benefit of building your own apps is the joy of creation. Actually taking the time and effort to learn the skills and build an app that you can use and reuse can be incredibly rewarding. I released the Irish Train Watch app a couple of years ago, to show train times for Irishrail (Ireland’s national rail service) on the iPhone and Apple Watch. It’s a basic app with the most simple of graphics but I love it — because I use it everyday and it actually does something useful for me. It’s free so it hasn’t made me any money but has been just as rewarding in other ways.

It’s not as difficult as you may think

App development isn’t astrophysics. Or rocket science. Or rocket surgery. Or surgery.

App development is all about learning — learning “how to code” and learning all about the great tools available to help you make apps. You don’t need a degree in maths or a Masters in Something Impressively Difficult, you just need time and the commitment to learn and practice.

All you need to build an app is a computer and time.

It’s also free. Apart from the cost of your computer, wifi etc, you can build apps without paying or buying anything. If you want to put the apps into the Apple App Store or Google Play Store, you’ll need to pay ($99 for Apple, $25 for Google) but to build an app and put it on your own phone, it’s completely free.

The tools to build app are also free — Apple’s Xcode is the tool for making iOS apps and Android Studio is Google’s for Android apps. Both are available to download for free.

Where to start?

Hit the iOS or Android tabs at the top to see our first few guides that will get you started. I’m just building this site and will be adding more and more tutorials and guides throughout the year.

Why biscuits?

Who doesn’t like biscuits?!

Any thoughts or comments, I’d love to hear and if you thought this worth recommending to others, please hit the little heart below! Thanks, Andy