Building My First App on Android Studio
Taking the first step was the most challenging.
App Development always felt like a very exciting avenue that a lot of my peers were diving into. But for me, it felt dystopian. I wanted to try it out for a long time, but I never knew where to start from.
Finally, in March, I found a hands-on course on app development. I knew that this could be my gateway to building apps. So, I started the course with utmost enthusiasm, soon to realise that I haven’t even installed the suitable software for practice. So I had to spend the next 1–2 hours to get the platform ready.
Thus I wrote this personal account on how I got started with Android Studio, what resources I used, and other experiences.
Getting Started
Before you download Android Studio, remember that it is a heavyweight app, so it takes time to install and work if your system is not optimal. The recommended amount is 8 GB of RAM plus 1 GB additional for running the emulator with 4 GB of disk space.
Before getting started, you can install Java JDK if it is not already installed in your system. You can do so by visiting the Oracle website and downloading JDK. Once installed, you can download Android Studio.
For me, this part had taken quite some time because of my low internet speed. So if that’s the case for you as well, don’t panic it will download, eventually.
Creating The First App
Once I downloaded the software, it was time to build my first app. And that’s the easy part. All you need to do is click on the empty activity and enter the name of your app.
During the first few days, I preferred working with the design view of XML. Remembering the name of all the attributes and typing them myself felt very daunting. So, you too can use this approach if you are overwhelmed by the number of files present in the project.
Naturally, the first demo app that I created was a simple Hello World app with no design elements. It’s so much easier than using any other programming language. All I had to do was drag the text view and enter the text I wanted.
And voila, the first app is ready. The next step was to run the app on an emulator and get a live view of how it comes up. For this, you can use any of the built-in emulators or even your mobile. I prefer using the pre-installed emulator because I don’t want to set up more.
My Experience
I practised all the blocks of Android Studio whilst I was going through the course, and that was very helpful. If you too are just starting, it would be useful to keep some resources or videos handy to avoid running into some roadblocks.
I have built a few more small apps for simple math operations, image display, graphs, etc. Building these apps gave me the confidence to try these new things. And I would surely recommend anyone who is even remotely interested in just try it!
Resources
Download Java- https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/javase-downloads.html
Download Android Studio and SDK tools- https://developer.android.com/studio
