Android — I think we will become good friends
Android Development Workshop
After spending a week learning JavaScript, I was curious to explore more about full stack development and decided to attend an Android Studio workshop organised by Codebar.
Having previously worked in marketing for Samsung and being an android user, I couldn’t wait to see what went on behind the interface. With the workshop being only two hours, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect and what we would manage to fit in, in such a short space a time. But I was about to be pleasantly surprised.
The workshop took place in at Novoda’s office in London and upon arrival we were greeted by the organiser. We were served a lovely meal and had the opportunity to network with other developers from a range of industry backgrounds.
We started off by being given an inspiring presentation from Novoda about TalkBack, an app which helps blind and vision-impaired people to use and interact with their devices.
We were then paired up and coached by Danielle Vass, the organiser of the event who was an Android Developer at Compare the Market. Our task was to use Android Studio to build a Cookie Clicker — an app which takes click as user input and adds the click to a counter.
Below is a screenshot from when I started building the front end. The software was user-friendly and easy to navigate, through switching between building the back end in Java and the front end in XML, supported by a preview on the right-hand side of the screen.
I was completely new to both Java and XML, but it was easy to pick up the basics and most methods were self-completing which prevented potential syntax errors. I love trying to new languages and writing some Java and XML was definitely the highlight of the day! Below is the finished work in Android Studio:
And here’s the final result. When clicking the code it returns ‘NOM NOM NOM’ (I found this more fun than a counter!):
Overall, I really enjoyed the workshop! It was super interesting, the coaches were passionate and in two hours I was introduced to two completely new languages, used Android Studio for the first time and made a fully functioning application.
It also made me realise how important it is to get exposure to different languages and software at this stage in my career - to get a bigger picture of all the languages but most importantly to find out what I enjoy the most. And I think it’s safe to say, Android development has definitely caught my attention!
