want to get into Android, but quickly became frustrated with what's out there...

[fred rosenberger]

Hi,

so I've been out of writing Java for a while...i wanted to write a little app. for my phone to play games with my daughter. I downloaded the development kit, but quickly got frustrated.

What do you see as the biggest hurdle for someone just getting into Android development? How much time will I need to commit before i start feeling like I can actually DO something?

[David Griffiths]

fred rosenberger wrote:Hi,

so I've been out of writing Java for a while...i wanted to write a little app. for my phone to play games with my daughter. I downloaded the development kit, but quickly got frustrated.

What do you see as the biggest hurdle for someone just getting into Android development? How much time will I need to commit before i start feeling like I can actually DO something?

Hello Fred,

You're looking at about a week with a book like HFAD to get to grips with the fundamentals of the platform. The good thing about Android is the wealth of tools and libraries that are available. The confusing thing about Android is the wealth of libraries and tools that available :-) Our aim was to guide people through the forest of technology and get you up and running as quickly as possible. You are not alone in your experience of Android. You're the reason we wrote the book.

D+D

[Pete Letkeman]

I'm sure that this was meant for this week promotion, but I'll let you know about me.

My biggest problem hasn't been not knowing the technology so much as not having a creative idea to apply the technology to.
As a hobby Android developer I have tried to think of what I could program and once I get an idea I'd Google it see that it has already been done.
In which case I would decide not to create the app and not get any better with my Android development skills.
I'm sure that you have noticed that there are millions of apps for the Android platform out there and some times you can find something like Tic Tac Toe has been created more then a few times.

Anyways, that my story,
Pete

[David Griffiths]

Pete Letkeman wrote:I'm sure that this was meant for this week promotion, but I'll let you know about me.

My biggest problem hasn't been not knowing the technology so much as not having a creative idea to apply the technology to.

Hello Pete,

Yes, the key is finding something that solves a problem for somebody. If you can find the right problem, it'll make it a lot easier to find the motivation to really get into the depths of the platform.

D+D

[fred rosenberger]

My goal is to write a little app. to play a game. Sure, there are existing versions of this game out there, but i was going to do a stripped down version that only had the features we want. No networked play. No ads. No fancy graphics.  Just a bare bones, "digital paper" kind of app.  I may check out the book...in my copious spare time...

[paul nisset]

Pete Letkeman wrote:I'm sure that this was meant for this week promotion, but I'll let you know about me.

My biggest problem hasn't been not knowing the technology so much as not having a creative idea to apply the technology to.
As a hobby Android developer I have tried to think of what I could program and once I get an idea I'd Google it see that it has already been done.
In which case I would decide not to create the app and not get any better with my Android development skills.
I'm sure that you have noticed that there are millions of apps for the Android platform out there and some times you can find something like Tic Tac Toe has been created more then a few times.

Anyways, that my story,
Pete

You have to decide what your goal is. Is it learning a new technology like Android or is it creating something original?

Another way of looking at it is if you are learning a new technology,choose an application that you know how to program and do that for the new technology.
That way you are solely focusing on the new technology and how it works.

Trying to find a problem that hasn't been solved is always  going to be long process regardless of  the technology.

Doing both at the same time is going to make for a very long project.

I started my first Android project as a Sudoku game. I then realized most of the work was getting the programming logic right for the game regardless of the platform. So I made it a Java based web app because that is what my background is . I was later able to port a lot of the code over to Android for my Android Sudoku app. Needless to say there are a lot of Sudoku games out there but  in the process, I learned a lot more than I originally expected to.

-Paul