Sam Soffes

Yesterday, I released my first Android app, Coins, that I built in a day. I first made Coins in a day for iOS in December. It’s a simple app for seeing how much a certain amount of bitcoins are worth.

Learning Android

Lately, I’ve been learning Android. I’ve just been watching videos on Treehouse after teaching a course there. Last week, I decided to get serious and ordered a Nexus 5.

I decided it was time to try the other side. Android continues to gain market share. It would be ridiculous of me to write it off forever because I don’t like it. I’m actually very impressed so far. It’s much better than I expected.

Learning Android is an experiment. I wanted to stretch myself and learn something new. I’ve never written Java before¹ so it’s been interesting learning about such an established language.

Overall, I don’t like Java that much. There are things I appreciate and wish other languages had. Most of it, seems excessive though^2. It’s funny to think about the vast amount of software built with this stuff. If anything, I’m glad I understand it more.

Building Coins for Android

I made the iOS version in a day and made the Android version in a day. I like this pattern. It felt pretty good to build my first app on a foreign platform in just a day. Granted, it’s a stupid simple app. Having worked through several Treehouse courses, applying what I had learned and Googling for the rest made it pretty easy.

If you’re interested, check out Coins on Google Play.

1: Well actually I took a class in high school, but the teacher didn’t know Java and I ended the year not knowing what a method was. So you could say I've written some if typing exactly what was in a text book counts.

2: How much do these guys like XML? Seriously.