Beginning Android and Java

Question

I started a job as an appdeveloper for android. After a week they figured that I'm not fast enough getting the apps ready so the fired me and offered me an internship, for free.

I'm wondering how I can get better fast. Should I read more (I'm missing architecture stuff I think)? What should I read? should I just start coding stuff, or should I do a course of some sort?

I'm reading design patterns from head first. Will Java design patterns help me with Android or are they not applicable on android. Basically I'm at home reading android stuff. The company said they would take me back when I'm good enough so I need to get better quick.

• Robert Harvey: stackoverflow.com/questions/5240254/…
• Robert Harvey: stackoverflow.com/questions/1114287/…

Answer 1

Best way to learning ( imho ) is by looking in to already coded project and disecting them. Try to understand how the program is made up. Then work on some tutorials and expand then!

Resources:

Java: http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/index.html
Android tutorials: http://p-xr.com

Answer 2

I assume you are the only developer in a very small company. If I'm wrong and there are multiple developers then they should be doing design and architecture and you shouldn't need to worry about that--just code the sections they give you to code.

So the rest of this is based on the assumption that you are the sole developer.

Don't worry about architecture or design or anything--Get a GUI together as fast as you possibly can--it's all about what you can show. Even if it has nothing at all behind it, it's visible progress.

A well architected solution will save you bunches of time in the futre, but from the sound of it you don't have the experience, and also a well architected job is front-loaded.. a lot more time spent before you can show anything. Doesn't sound like that will make your employers happy.

I'd actually spend 2 or 3 hours some evening researching some of the "Project Management and Design portions of XP (you may have to do this on your own time at first--but then if you're getting paid 0ドル all your time is your own time right now)

XP is all about your process being transparent to your customer (in this case your customer is your employer). This allows them to understand why something might take time and it actually allows them to make decisions on the fly to correct problems or speed the process by eliminating features.

I'd start by writing down each task on a piece of paper. Each of these tasks should take a couple hours to a day or two to do so make them pretty fine-grained but don't write down a time estimate, instead when you are done with the cards go through them and rank them all in difficulty 1-5 (The purpose becomes clear when you see how XP does time estimations).

Then you start interacting with your employeer---they choose which tasks they want done for the day/week. You do them.

As you are executing tasks you may encounter new ones or have to break some up. This is expected--make more sheets of paper. If your employers want to know when it will be ready, look into how to do burndown charts and time prediction. In XP this practice does a good job of taking into account the fact that programmers suck at estimating time (It uses your history and the difficulty 1-5 ranking to determine how long a "2" actually takes you to do.

Soon after implementing this practice, decide on what metrics they want you to maintain in order to get paid, or see if they want to pay you per task.

On the other hand they are only treating you like that because you let them. You're fired now, start looking for another job. If you find one, just walk away.

Answer 3

Best for learning is doing. All reading will get yo nowhere if you don't practice.

And the design pattern may help, but much of the classical wisdom may not directly apply - if only for the fact that the devices have limited memory.

Take the JavaBeans approach, where a bean has to have a getter and setter. On Android (before 2.3 iirc), this had a negative impact on performance, so that making fields public and directly using them is preferred.

To learn, take an open source project (e.g. my Zwitscher app), use it, try to find out what you want to improve and improve it.

Answer 4

Firstly, make sure that your employer was justified in his reasons for firing you. Some of the questions you should be asking them are:
- Were the deadlines not respected? In this case, if you did give them timelines for completion of phases of your work, then you may need to look at improving your effort estimation. If they gave you timelines, see if they were reasonable
- Were features added to your work on an ad-hoc basis? Many times I've found that a freeze on requirements is consistently broken
- If you are slow and haven't picked up some of the basics, then come up with a sample application that closely resembles your employer's application, and DO it. Use SO, developer docs and books to clear doubts and hone your skills.

Best of Luck with Programming :)