1.5+ years of learning to code
Just about a year ago, I didn’t know how to program.
It was the summer of 2016. Even after taking up Computer Engineering for my undergraduate studies, not being able to program annoyed me. After one year of struggling to code in C/C++ and another upcoming semester of struggling with Java, I cursed the teaching methodologies of the professors that hampered the learning process.
A slideshow with code snippets? Seriously?
Although I did not mind accepting the fact that I didn’t know how to program, I decided to not let that define me. Android Application Development is what was targeted and I nosedived into it.
Starting from point zero, I cannot express my gratitude towards Udacity, I had developed my first Android Application within a week! A single screen app which kept track of the Basketball score of two teams. Another week came around and so did another application. This one was a coffee ordering app, which accepted user input and sent all the respective details into an email client.
Before the start of 3rd semester, I had two very basic Android Applications taking up precious space on my mobile phone!
Special thanks to Tanishq Sharma, who guided me and helped me out when I was unable to figure out things despite a sea of resources on Stack Overflow and more! For my third Android project, I had built him a static application with texts and images and media files to wish him a Happy Birthday!
By the time the semester ended, I had learnt how to code in XML and was coding quite proficiently in JAVA. I had also increased my familiarity with Android Studio IDE which was then going to help me to a great extent in the near future — read internship.
To boost the learning curve, I took up a winter internship!
Corporate places are amazing in making you realize how small a cog you are in the world of giant machines. I just wanted to be an important one when I’d graduate.
I had a learning internship where I replicated an in-house financial application which would bridge the gap between clients and industry experts. During the later stages, I also tried to contribute towards the building of the application.
Following semester, we had an inter-college Android Design Contest. This was just what I needed to implement all the things I had learnt.
Shoppingo was developed as a project. Shoppingo stood 2nd in the competition and was further developed to release it on the Google Play Store. Tushar Gupta and I are continuously working on it and striving to making it a better, in terms of functionality and user experience.
P.S. Shoppingo recently crossed 1000+ downloads. Please go have a look if you haven’t yet!
Shoppingo : Best Deals Online
Amidst all of this, I also volunteered when TheLabs launched(Check them out. They are doing great work!). I was part of the team that taught and debugged for the Android-in-60 workshop held at MPSTME, NMIMS, Mumbai.
I continued taking up courses with Udacity India (believe me they have one of the best tutors!) where I kept learning about Android Development. At the same time, I was on the lookout for projects and I opened myself up to freelance development.
Since June 2017, I have been taking up different projects ranging from developing private applications for a CA firm to developing public applications for garnering users. Also developed an application for a government recognized N.G.O. which is currently being used by the executive members to communicate and provides the users with the latest information about the events, contact details about it’s members and more.
I had focused on developing clean and minimalistic applications, with a huge focus on User Experience.
Some of the applications that I’ve developed!
You can download most of these applications from either Akshansh Jain — Google Play Store or MadHouse — Google Play Store.
Experience is what actually matters!
2018 — so far
Recently, I applied and got selected for the Google Challenge Scholarship, 2018 where currently I am learning about the best practices for Android Application Development and trying my best to help the interested out in the forums. Also eyeing the Nanodegree Scholarship, I aim to build a lot many amazing apps! Stay tuned!
Furthermore, I recently developed and launched my first website — my Personal Portfolio, which was built in the major part of two weeks. Here, I talk about my projects: completed and upcoming. Please do have a look: akshanshjain.me
Finally, I had an awesome first experience at competitive coding in February where I participated and reached the final round of the Semicode event organized in my college. I won a [dot]tech domain (www.akshansh.tech) and it also taught me why Python is amazing!
I’ll leave you’ll with this-
“To achieve what you have not, you must become what you are not. You have to grow into your goals.” — Darren Hardy
For regular updates, you can find me on LinkedIn!
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Originally published at medium.com on March 4, 2018.
