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So I've been doing a lot of app development, and code maintenance at work. I'm an android developer, though I do some other stuff around the office occasionally. The last few weeks we've had a shortage of tickets for me to work on, and the ones I've gotten I've pounded out and been bored for several hours after.
I'm looking for some good activities, guides, projects etc.. that I can work on during these down times to keep my android skills sharp. I've been reading up on optimization, security, design and implementation strategies and some other fun stuff.
I'm looking for short projects - 1-3 hours long, which will teach me something meaningful about the platform, reveal some hidden aspect I didn't understand, or otherwise just be really cool so I can be like - "yea boss, I'm a baller". Beyond that - really well implemented code would be cool too, I like looking at other peoples stuff and as I'm doing a lot of maintenance programming the ability to quickly aclimate with code is something I'm trying to work on.
Thanks guys,
How about using your 'down time' answering questions on StackOverflow. I find it a delightful diversion after a gruelling day in the "Android Swamp Mines (tm)" ;-)
Seriously though, there are a lot of questions that are better answered if you create a small test program to test the user's problem and your answer. The community also gets better quality answers.
I think it can be done like this:
1) You are amazed by some application or some part of some application similar to how one gets amazed by seeing some beautiful thing
2) Being a programmer you, however, have an advantage of analyzing your amazement in terms of programming and are able then to formulate for yourself a quest something like 'how can I achieve such an amazing OK Button (or perhaps Cancel Button)
3) You then start working on achieving that same Ok (or perhaps Cancel) button in your small test project
4) You then stuck
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It's been around 1 month that I have started to work on Android to create an app, I understood the basics (Views, widgets, intent ...) and I use a lot developer.android.com to ancknowledge new things but when I try to do complex things, such as creating a camera preview inside my app, I feel like I am Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V the code that is provided without really understanding it. And most of the time my app crashes.
So, do you have any tips for me to make things easier ?
Decide what do you want to do. You said that you are building an app. That is a good thing. Many people do not realize that they cannot get to the finish line when they do not know where it is.
Find a good source of online video tutorials. Video tutorials are far more superior to written books if you have 2+ screens on your computer because you can watch the video and write the code at the same time. (I personaly like pluralsight if you are a student microsoft offers 6 months for free)
Choose 2-4 tutorials and finish them.
Start writing your own app.
If you do not know how to do something. Try to find it in the source code that you wrote in those tutorials.
If are not be able to find it there try to google the solution or ask some questions on stack overflow. People will most likely just give it a negative rating but ... you know who cares about them.
Repeat point 4,5 and 6.
If you have a bad feeling about quality of your source code watch more tutorials so that you can see how would other people solve your problems.
There are some valuable resources for learning android
I believe this course is a HUGE jumpstart, from Google employees:
http://Www.udacity.com/course/developing-android-apps--ud853
This site can also contain information that can help you:
http://www.vogella.com/
and if you want to spend some bucks, check the Android Development Nanodegree:
https://www.udacity.com/course/android-developer-nanodegree-by-google--nd801
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Is it advisable to start first from android pdf books instead of the developers website because the developer.android.com Android training because they seem to go way too fast for me to comprehend and I have java knowledge
I highly highly recommend this series: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE08A97D36D5A255F
The series will honestly teach you everything you need to know, and it's taught by a very knowledgeable person. Don't skip the first videos, they go by slowly, but help you comprehend the Android system.
If you have eclipse and do the android developer website tutorials. It should suffice. I don't think a book is necessary especially if you have knowledge of Java.
1. Watch the videos. 2. Go through the tutorials. 3. Get your fingers on the keyboard.
Those three steps in about a month period helped me release an app, and I had very little knowledge of Java.
As someone with a brief but ancient history with Java, reading O'Reilly's Programming Android cover to cover was great. It gives you a very solid overview of app life cycles and quite a few other extremely important and useful components of Android including SQLite, intents, etc. (many of the basics, nicely distilled in one place).
This is best book
Commonsware book
By Mark Murphy , you will also get a timely hour chat with Mark to solve your queries. This book also gets updated quickly so you won't be having an outdated version. By far best money spend on any book.
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Ok, guys, I think that's the right place to ask a question, because it's all about development(if I'm wrong or it's duplicate question, please tell me).
So, I want to dive deep in Android, understand how system works down to the kernel(and also learn what's behind rooting and other hacking stuff).
Where should I go from here? Linux book? VM architecture?
Just downloading the source code didn't help as I don't understand how all that works.
Where should I go from here?
There are two books on Android internals that I am aware of:
One, XDA Developers' Android Hacker's Toolkit, is getting lousy reviews, but that may be because it does not cover much ground beyond what's found on XDA itself. However, if you're not super-familiar with the subject, it may still be worthwhile.
The other, Embedded Android: Porting, Extending, and Customizing, was supposed to be out in July, but it looks like the publication date got pushed out to August. I think that there is an early-access edition on the O'Reilly site for purchase.
Marakana's TechTV series includes a number of videos (e.g., conference presentations) on firmware mods. They, and a couple of other firms, also offer training on the subject.
You are certainly welcome to poke around XDA and its forum posts on firmware mods, but it's definitely more of a community site than a reference guide to the subject.
Beyond that, learning how the Linux OS works (kernel, drivers, etc.) would certainly help, as Android is based on that stuff.
And there's a new book out as of January 2015: At http://newandroidbook.com - Volume 1 of 2, however, with one more scheduled to discuss "deeper" internals
Nice introduction to Android internals is for example in slides for opersys course (http://www.opersys.com/training/embedded-android / courseware tab) - the slides are not fully self-explaining are they are may be a good starting point for next studium..
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Two parts to this question
1) I am working with a group of six others in a computer science class and will be creating an Android application over the next 3 or 4 months. I am looking for suggestions as to how we can come up with an idea that is not only practical but also possible to complete in the time given. I am the only one in the group that has experience with the SDK but the whole group is proficient in Java.
My main concern is taking on too much and taking too long to decide.
Summary: How should we go about deciding what we want to do?
2) Any one have any ideas? Is there anything anyone would like to see implemented on Android? I find projects like this are way easier to get motivated for when it isn't just for the class so if anyone has any ideas I am all ears.
How about an android app to do distributed brainstorm sessions. Code up a Google App site as a shared info distributing point and collect the ideas. After collection analyze them and add a scoring system.
Should be fun and doable and you can use it for selecting your next project.
your best bet is to look around for "pain". is there something about your school that drives everyone nuts? can you think of a way to solve it or at least make it a little more bearable in some way? If you solve peoples problems, they will beat a path to your door.
alternatively, you could take something that everyone loves and make it better. these kinds of ideas are useful, but i think you get more bang for your buck if you improve a horrible process rather than incremental improving an already good thing.
You'll have a lot of motivation and can get the support of your friends if you make something you and your friends will realy want to use.
An interesting app might be one for your university. Some universities have official apps, but most don't. This could be interesting because you might be able to integrate your project with resources from the administration (involves talking to other people and working with a foreign interface) or use RSS feeds and XML data from your college's website. You could add features like weather on campus, course lists, an integrated map of the campus, latest school news, and the like. It's a manageable project but can be expanded and improved in many sorts of ways.
Here is a Forum that people have announced a ton of ideas they thought about. If you find one you like then I would look at the market or at AppBrain to make sure it doesn't exist. I thought an app for Parental SMS Watch App would be cool. A parent could flag words that would them alerts when there kids got a message when a word like "sex" comes across. Hope this helps. I have been in the college scene just recently. Good luck with your design project!
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So I've recently released an application on to the Android Market. Whilst it was in the "Just In" section I was seeing decent download numbers, but since then interest seems to have dropped off significantly. I think now people can only find my app through a specific keyword search, which doesn't make me particularly confident about it ever becoming popular.
What can you do when your app has passed the 'Just In' stage but has not reached the 'Featured' stage? The majority of applications seem to be in this middle stage so I think other people must have a similar problem. It seems like the 'Featured' section just makes the popular apps more popular, and makes it really difficult for newer apps to ever catch up with them. Does anyone know if the situation with the Apple App Store is any different?
It seems to be possible to refresh your app and make it appear in the 'Just In' section again if you update it sometime after, but I can't find any real guidelines on this. Is anyone familiar with the specific rules for this, and is repeatedly riding the 'Just In' buzz the only viable strategy for a new app?
I remember reading that updating the app will bring it back to the top of that list... I googled it a bit and found this blogger that recommends spacing out your updates to make it to the "just in" list. The writer points to another blogger that had a similar experience. Hope it helps.
There is no longer a "Just In" section so this answer is out-of-date.
There is now no way to get noticed if you don't do advertising. Your app will remain at the bottom of the list with zero downloads and no ratings forever unless you do marketing, get reviews, etc.
Even having a demo won't help because no-one will ever see it since it will be 50-60 pages ahead.