This post is about my journey with android development and how I learned and how you can learn at least to develop basic android apps.
What gets me started is this course of udacity. This is a free course from google team best suited for beginners I learned the entire basics from here. This course is enough to get started for simple app developments.
My First app excluding the apps created in the above course was the Quote app.
This was a simple app with a list view where all the quotes were stored inside the app itself in an array list. I developed this app when I was in the 2nd year of my bachelor’s degree. The app size was 20MB because of hardcoding and list view which I was using like a noob. If I need to add any quote I have to make changes in the code and build the app again.
As you can see this is very inefficient but I was happy that I created this app. So why the Quote app, I love reading quotes that are deep and meaningful. This line from dead poet society sums up what I’m trying to say
“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”
Dead Poets Society
My second attempt was last year to go big. Quotes with images and hosting own server to store the URLs of these images. The problem with this approach was Image optimization, involving CDN and creating my own server and keep up running where I was not well versed with CDN and image optimizations and it was costing around 2k for servers which I’m not even able to use to the full extent. So 2k for a side project which won’t be generating any revenue, not worth it. Dropped it
My 3rd attempt, an Android app with firebase as a database, was a perfect solution, they only charge if the hits go above 50k in a day. My app may never get hit that much in a single day.
So last week I published this app and made me realize what made me publish this app and came across a quote
“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last, you create what you will”
George Bernard Shaw
You can get the app from here:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=bhanu.quote
This is a minimal version, will update as the time progress
What’s next?
- Share option
- Add Favourites
- Optimise the build
Happy Reading!!