Android App for my mom
For the first time since I moved to the USA about 4 years ago, my mom is coming here to visit me. And it goes without saying I’m really excited.
I am making many plans to show her fun things, take her to different places and do some shopping of course. And while I was thinking about the shopping part, I realized one thing which I was doing on daily basis when I had recently moved here.
I was constantly converting all the prices I saw from US Dollars ($) to Indian Rupees (₹).
I guess rest of the international students would agree with me that they did the same.
Being an engineer (although not a good one) multiplying the $ prices with 60 or 65 to get equivalent ₹ was not a challenging task for me.
But my mom isn’t an engineer and neither she is super comfortable with the mobile apps on her phone. (She has become a Whatsapp super user, that is another story).
So last week I was thinking what can I do to help my mom when she goes for shopping on her own. I thought why not make an app she can easily use.
Then the sane part of my brain told me “Abhishek, you don’t know any Java, how can you even think of making an app?”
My (devil) engineer part of the brain replied “oh screw that, lets do it Abhishek”
Sane Brain: But you don’t even know good coding practices for an app
Engineer Brain: oh screw that, lets do it Abhishek
Sane Brain: But what if Google Play Store rejects your app?
Engineer Brain: oh screw that, lets do it Abhishek
Sane Brain: But.. but
Engineer Brain: oh screw that, lets do it Abhishek
And with that last “screw that”, the engineer brain won and here I am writing an article about my app on LinkedIn.
I designed the layout, coded the app, tested it with multiple device emulators, Robo tested it on Google Firebase for more physical devices, created a logo, tested the app again for corner cases, released it on Google Play Store and decided to write this story all in 1 week.
Now the reader might wonder, so what is the big deal with this tiny app which does just one thing?
The answer is, that exactly is the big deal that the app does just one thing it is supposed to do and makes sure that almost everyone who has an android phone can easily use it without any struggle. That’s it.
I have no plans to put any ads, any user data collection code or any other garbage in my app. This was a good learning exercise for me and I am planning to keep it clean and easy for the users.
I don’t have an iPhone myself, so I am not sure if I would be able to make an app for iOS or not.
I hope your parents use this app and like it on their next visit to the USA.
Here is the Google Play link for the app.
