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Old 02-28-2013, 02:11 PM   #1
RedMileDJ
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Default Developing / making smart phone apps

I need a new hobby. Something to keep my brain going.

I was thinking about learning how to code and make my own smart phone apps. Mostly geared towards the Android platform, but also iPhone and BlackBerry.

Where is a good place to start? Is there a website or online tutorials I can take? I mostly just want to explore and try stuff on my own. Self teach. I have no idea where to start.

I've Googled a bit, but I can't seem to find the answers I'm looking for. Anyone at CP have experience doing this, or can point me in the right direction?
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Old 02-28-2013, 02:19 PM   #2
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Pick a platform, first. Unless you're an experienced developer, you probably won't want to try picking up Objective-C and another language simultaneously.

Lowest barrier to entry is probably making good HTML5/JS apps and packing them in a wrapper.
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Old 02-28-2013, 05:23 PM   #3
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I have been thinking about this as well but know pretty much zilch...

I went to a website called www.codecademy.com to start and mess around. They have 4 or 5 different codes to start messing with. I started with python but will look to java as well.
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Old 02-28-2013, 10:01 PM   #4
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iTunes U has some good courses, a search turns up some Android courses.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/...nt/id409819366
https://itunes.apple.com/itunes-u/mo...86258688?mt=10

You should probably learn Java first though.

https://itunes.apple.com/ca/itunes-u...gy/id384232896

I've done some listening to the Stanford courses and have liked them.
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Old 03-01-2013, 10:16 AM   #5
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Oh wow - totally forgot to recommend a place to start!

Without question, my recommendation is for online learning in this area is Treehouse. It's put together by a who's who of web & app designers, is affordable, and I've heard nothing but positive reviews. Check it out.
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Old 03-01-2013, 10:17 AM   #6
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Old 03-02-2013, 01:29 PM   #7
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Thanks for all the feedback.

I'm going to concentrate my efforts on the Android platform first. Make sense, since I have an Android.
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Old 03-03-2013, 05:15 PM   #8
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I am a Flash developer, and I now use Flash and Adobe AIR to package my apps as native applications for Android and iOS.

There are lots of books and online tutorials on Flash and ActionScript 3 (Flash's scripting language) and all the concepts are transferable to a mobile app.
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Old 03-03-2013, 05:59 PM   #9
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Quote:
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I now use Flash and Adobe AIR to package my apps as native applications for Android and iOS.
Certainly not my definition of native, but whatever works I suppose.
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Old 03-03-2013, 08:52 PM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Iceman90 View Post
I am a Flash developer, and I now use Flash and Adobe AIR to package my apps as native applications for Android and iOS.

There are lots of books and online tutorials on Flash and ActionScript 3 (Flash's scripting language) and all the concepts are transferable to a mobile app.
I'd advise against this and stick to learning a native language for the platform you want to program for. Wrapping flash code to work with mobile has many drawbacks, especially in performance.
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Old 03-03-2013, 10:31 PM   #11
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If you had no background in coding, I wonder if learning to develop for a mobile device might be a bit much out of the gate. On top of all the fundamentals inherent in any modern language (and all of the theory that underlies all programming languages), you've got networking, a GUI, the cross-platform development cycle & tools, an entire OS API, etc that you have to learn.

In my day, learning even a language like C as your first wasn't that bad - you'd edit your text file, compile, run, it would crash, and you'd do that again, maybe 100 times a day, for a month or two before it started to make sense By that time, your application maybe consisted of a source file AND a header file, and you'd figured out how to work the debugger. But this was all done at a console level, with simple command line tools, and simple gets() calls for input (we didn't worry about buffer overruns back then haha), and that meant it was easier to get your head around the actual job of code - to get work done, as opposed to managing a multi-touch GUI, fetching, parsing, and posting data to the web, etc.

I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm saying I don't know if it CAN be done - what say you mobile devs? Is any of the major mobile platforms a good place to begin to learn coding as the OP has suggested? Or would the better recommendation be to use a reasonably sane language (eg. not Python ) on a PC and begin to learn the fundamentals and theory of computer programming first before jumping into coding for a system like a mobile device?

I think either would be equally rewarding in the context of what the OP is looking for (a mental challenge/stimulation).

For the record, I rarely code anymore, other than when I'm bored and get the urge, or have a very specific requirement I can't find a third party util for, and even then, I mostly code in RealBasic on the Mac, which is just enough GUI and OO coding to keep me entertained without having to sweat the true complexity of a development system like XCode.
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Old 03-03-2013, 11:35 PM   #12
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Yeah that's kind of why I'd suggest learning Java by itself first, it's the language for Android apps so it's not like you're wasting time, but you need to get some basics of the language under your belt first.
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Old 03-04-2013, 11:49 AM   #13
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What is your experience in software development?

Objective-C has a huge learning curve in my opinion (as an experienced developer in C, C++, Java, Objective-C, Ruby). Java is probably the easiest to learn, but Java is hella lame.

Also, don't even both developing for Blackberry right now. You're either going to be making an Android app that runs on BB10 or HTML5 based app.
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Old 03-04-2013, 12:53 PM   #14
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He did say he wanted to make Android apps, hence the suggestion to learn Java.
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Old 03-04-2013, 01:03 PM   #15
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Quote:
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He did say he wanted to make Android apps, hence the suggestion to learn Java.
Yes, I know. He had also mentioned the other platforms in the original post, and I was responding to that.
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Old 03-04-2013, 01:05 PM   #16
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I'm just bitter you called Java lame
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Old 03-04-2013, 01:12 PM   #17
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I'm just bitter you called Java lame
That's because you know it's true.
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Old 03-04-2013, 07:02 PM   #18
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Also, don't even both developing for Blackberry right now. You're either going to be making an Android app that runs on BB10 or HTML5 based app.
If you were an experienced developer though that could crank out a BB app relatively easily, you stand _way_ more chance of being noticed and becoming a leader in that segment. Good luck being weather/podcast/to-do app #300,000 on iOS or Android.

Cascades (the BB10 API) is based on QT, so it can't be completely terrible to code for.
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Old 03-04-2013, 09:29 PM   #19
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Oh c'mon, it's been two hours since I posted, someone start writing BB10 apps
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Old 03-04-2013, 09:34 PM   #20
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Oh c'mon, it's been two hours since I posted, someone start writing BB10 apps
Haha, no thanks. I'll concentrate on Android and Java for now.
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