Making my first Android app
I imagine a lot of people interested in learning to code have a long term goal of making apps. At least that was my mindset a few years back. Making apps seemed like a pretty cool job, letting you be creative, have fun and maybe even make a fortune.
As time went on, I did learn to code, and over the past few years, my coding vocabulary (if that's a thing) has included MATLAB, Python, Java, C, C++, Oz, Scala, Prolog, HTML, and some Javascript (I plan to get learn more Javascript in 2018), as well as certain frameworks built around some of them.
But did I make any smart phone apps?
No.
Programming is more than just making apps
During my first year in university, all the programming we learnt was text and numbers and often had to be interacted with through the terminal. Back then, I was just eager to learn to make some proper products, but looking back, I'm glad we started out mastering the basics of programming first.I think that at some point, I started appreciating the unlimited services programming had to offer, more than the fancy visual apps I had imagined that I'd be making.
Finally getting started
Countless bots, puzzle-solvers and simulators later, I'm finally faced with the task of making an Android app for a school assignment. I installed Java Development Kit, Android Studio and LibGDX and started right away.
Before watching any tutorials, I always like to just play around with the code structures provided and see how much I can figure out myself. Since Android Studio is Java-based, a lot of the code was pretty intuitive.
The first thing I tried to do, was to make an object move across the screen. I drew some kind of bush in paint.NET and to my great pleasure, I did actually manage to make it move across the screen. While this is certainly not an impressive behavior, I'm pretty satisfied that I have finally taken my first steps towards learning to make apps.
By the time I got this far, It was getting pretty late, so I might write an update in a later post.
As an endnote, I would just encourage anyone who wants to get into app development to install Java Development Kit and Android studio and get started with some tutorials online. I would also appreciate some tips from experienced app developers.
Thanks for reading, and have a nice day!
I can't wait for the update !!
Great job, keep it on
Now, if you are thinking about making an app then you should make architecture first. That way you can focus on the main aspects of your app like e.g availability or modifibility and note just write spaghetti code. :)
I'll answer as if I don't know you;)
The app is actually the first exercise in Software Architecture class, so this first exercise is supposed to give us a quick understanding of the actual programming interface before we start our more elaborate project where the architecture will be well planned and documented before we get started;)