/dev/world 2026

Teaching Apple App Development in the Age of AI Coding

AI coding tools are becoming part of how students, indie developers, and professional engineers learn to build software. For Apple-platform education, this creates both an opportunity and a challenge. Learners can now generate working SwiftUI code much earlier, but they may also skip the fundamentals that help them understand architecture, debugging, design, and maintainability. This talk looks at how educators and mentors can teach iOS development when AI coding tools are readily available. Instead of banning AI or letting it do everything, we can design a human-in-the-loop learning process: learners define intent, break features into smaller tasks, ask AI for help, review the output, explain the code, test the app, and improve the user experience. Attendees will leave with teaching patterns, classroom exercises, and review questions that help learners use AI responsibly while still developing real Apple-platform skills.

About the presenter

Harry Ng is an iOS developer, consultant, and teacher with around 20 years of software development experience, including more than a decade building apps for Apple platforms. He previously co-founded Sorted, a productivity app used by millions of people across Apple devices, and has taught SwiftUI and iOS app development at universities and community events. Harry focuses on AI-assisted app development, SwiftUI, product design, and helping developers build better apps with thoughtful workflows.