How Hard Is It to Create a Simple iOS App as a Total Beginner?

Have you thought about using Flutter? It's a Google framework that lets you build apps for both iOS and Android from the same code. You can set everything up in just a couple of hours and find plenty of easy tutorials online. Pulling data, making changes, and showing it in the app can be done quickly if you don’t need fancy designs. Just keep in mind that you'll need a developer account from Apple, which is about $100 per year.

This sounds like a solid first project! Just dive into Xcode and look for a tutorial that matches what you want to do. You'll likely find that pulling data from a website and modifying it is quite manageable.

If you’re already good with Excel, you should feel pretty comfortable with coding too. Just start off small and learn as you go!

Making the app might actually be quite straightforward! You’d primarily be using the iOS development environment and its built-in tools, so if it’s just for personal use, go for it! With Xcode, you'll find a lot of standard libraries that can help. You could possibly have it ready in a week, especially since most of your time might just be getting familiar with Swift. But if you're thinking about publishing or monetizing it, that’s where things can get complicated with all sorts of requirements for the App Store. For basic functionality, it's often pretty easy, but preparing for all the unexpected user interactions can take more effort.