The reason I was so "amazed" is that I'm a programmer/developer myself, so I know the mindset and skill it takes to like to hack and solve programmatic problems.
Many people who aren't developers/programmers (like the founders of Sole Search) don't learn how to program - they usually just find somebody who does and have them handle the actual building of the app.
To me, it's pretty cool that these guys chose to learn themselves rather than just outsource.
This is very targeted programming. It is not like they picked up enough skills to be hired as a developer at Facebook or Google. As a programmer who went to a good school, I spent (and still spend) a lot of time studying things these guys don't give a crap about.
They probably don't know much about software engineering practices, security vulnerabilities, esoteric editors and dev tools, the details of networking, regular expressions, profiling or O-notation, design patterns, discrete math, etc.
They don't really have to know that stuff. They can just focus on iOS (which nicely abstracts a lot of things) and throw themselves into a project until it gets done. It is like learning enough about your car so you can fix and maintain it. You don't have to become an expert, you're not opening a shop.
Now they ceartainly put a ton of work into this, but I imagine they learned the minimum necessary to be effective. Of course, they'll probably have a bumpier road in the future than a seasoned developer would. But they seem scrappy enough to handle it. :)
Related story: I had a friend with zero programming exprience who did this with the LAMP stack since he had an idea for a website. His code was atrocious. As he learned a little more he would scrap and rewrite huge sections of his software. He'd stay up most of the night and work on the simplest parts for days. But he got shit done, and it worked well.
Most people that got in to programming outside of going through university got in to it to 'build something', I think I know more of those than I know of the ones that pursued 'programming' as a career.
The reason I was so "amazed" is that I'm a programmer/developer myself, so I know the mindset and skill it takes to like to hack and solve programmatic problems.
Many people who aren't developers/programmers (like the founders of Sole Search) don't learn how to program - they usually just find somebody who does and have them handle the actual building of the app.
To me, it's pretty cool that these guys chose to learn themselves rather than just outsource.