Java For App Development in Jaipur.

 It is the beginning of the new college year, thousands of students are leaving their schools for the first time and entering College. Some of them are well-versed with Java. One of the first questions these people ask are I know Java upto XX, what should I do now? Should I learn a new programming language? Should I learn more Java? What do I do?

It’s a really good question when you think of it. I was asking the same questions 2 years back. This article intends to answer a part of that question.What you can do with your limited knowledge of Java. There will not be much of coding here (I may write another article for that a bit later:). It is intended to introduce you to the world of Android App Development and attempt to answer a part of your question. If you don’t have any experience with Java, you can still read this course to find out how much Java is needed in app development.

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Question 1: I know Java upto XX, should I learn another language?

Ok, first of all, let’s ask ourselves, what is a programming language? A programming language is just a way of expressing something. What you have actually learned in school (or otherwise) are actually important concepts which can be used with almost any other modern programming language. Sure, each language has it’s pros and cons. You won’t be developing mobile apps in Python and you won’t be writing Machine Learning models in C. However, the basic principles remain the same. Concepts like OOPS, searching and sorting algorithms, functions are essentially the same across multiple languages, what changes is just the syntax.

So, should you actually learn another language? I won’t suggest running for it but you can give it a try. I would suggest learning Python if you wish to try out data science or some JavaScript (Along with HTML and CSS) if you want to build websites.
Side Note: What about C/C++? You will be learning C in your 1st year in most colleges (if you are a B.Tech student in India). C++ is also similar to C. So, I won’t suggest learning these languages now only to relearn them in college again.

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Getting started with android development!

Are there any prerequisites?

Indeed there are! You need to have a fair understanding of the following concepts in Java to get started.

  1. Basics : Variables, types, Expressions, Math, Strings, Methods/functions,
  2. Control Flow : If-else, Switch case, loops
  3. Data Structures : Arrays, ArrayLists (a fair understanding of the classes available under the Collections framework is really helpful)
  4. Classes and Objects : Basic understanding of classes, objects.
  5. Inheritance : Extending classes, Interfaces, Basic polymorphism.

If you have sufficient knowledge in these topics, you can get started right away! But if you need a refresher or are lacking in a particular concept, you can check out this free course on Coursera.

Tools Needed

You are going to need Android Studio with the Android SDK and the Java JDK + JRE to get started. You can get all that bundled right here: https://developer.android.com/studio

Apart from that, make sure you have a nice fast computer with a good RAM and CPU (and preferably SSD). Android Studio can really give you nightmares on a slow PC. Just trust me on this.

Gradle? Manifest? What’s all this?

Gradle is the build system for android. See, how I mentioned about libraries? Well, similar to how you imported classes in Java, you will be importing libraries in your apps. These libraries can be either part of the official Android Architecture or even be third party libraries. Gradle helps you build all these libraries with your Java and XML code. tl;dr - It’s just a fancy thing which ties up everything in your project together to just make it all work. It’s also the thing you will be blaming half the times your app doesn’t work.

Manifest, on the other hand, is one of the most important files in your app. Similar to how a passenger manifest lists details of all the passengers in a flight, the manifest.xml file will list all the Activities and their intentions in your app. It also lists all the other important stuff like your app icons, name, permissions your app requires, hardware features needed, different entry points among other things. See how important this little file is

Activity? Intents?

An Activity is pretty much like the real world activity. It does a specific task and represents a single screen on the app (such as a login activity).
Side Note: With the onset of Single Activity concepts, you might see apps with only a single activity and multiple fragments. Fragments are also similar to activities except that they live within an Activity. You will learn more about this later.

Intents are again similar to the real world meaning. An intent can be used to launch other activities in your own app and even in other apps! You can even get back results from these Activities to use with your own app.
Eg. A Photo-editing app opening the camera app to let the user click a picture and then using the result (picture) in it’s own activity (editing).Best app development company in jaipur

Too much information in a day? I know how it feels. This is just a very very basic overview of android development. It assumes that you are familiar with Java or programming in general. If you want to follow a course on android development, I recommend the Android Developer Fundamentals course by Google. If you just want to get a hang of making a Hello World app first, you can follow the guide at https://developer.android.com/training/basics/firstapp

I left out Kotlin from this post on purpose. It is really easy for Java developers to switch to Kotlin (especially for Android developers) and is actually recommended in a way. I will be covering Kotlin for android development in another article later.

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