Hello and welcome to my blog!
Introduction
You might wonder what kind of a blog this is. As the description up in the top bar says, this will be a blog about my route to Android development.
Allow me to introduce myself.
My name is Axel and I'm from Sweden.
Currently I haven't got a lot of experience from the developer's world.
Before I have been programming in GML (Game Maker Language), which, as I've understood it, is not all that impressive in the development world. I've also tried out both HTML and Objective-C programming.
Why Android?
So why did I start programming for the Android platform?
Well, I've always had an urge to create applicatoins and games.
I started with a program called Game Maker and actually got pretty good at it.
After I had created a couple of games I felt that it wasn't really as much fun anymore.
When I later on won an iPod Touch I felt that it would be great to be able to create applications and games for this platform. Sure enough, I started looking through the options of how I could create some application for my iPod. And I was very disappointed. Turned out that the only way you could write applications for the iOS system was by using a Mac! (Not anymore though). I didn't have a Mac, and I didn't really wanted to buy one either. So I started looking around the net and found a solution, running it through a virtual machine. After many fails I finally got it working.
Yet, this was not ideal as I felt that the virtual machine was pretty unresponsive and it really bugged me. I followed the Stanford iPhone development class on iTunes U and created a calculator with tons of different functions.
A couple of months later I bought myself a new mobile phone. I bought the ZTE Blade which has Android 2.2 installed and I have to say it's the best mobile I've ever owned (also my first smartphone...) Now I completely gave up on iOS (after getting disappointed once again when finding out that you have to pay an annual fee of $99 just to test your own game on your own device) and started looking into Android development instead. I quickly felt that this seemed like a great OS for me.
Where am I now?
I haven't gotten very far into the Android development world so far.
I bought a book which took me through the basics. About half way through I stopped reading it though. I felt that it just gave me code but didn't explain why the applicatoin behaved like it did.
I have now started reading "The busy coder's guide to Android development" instead from www.commonsware.com
I am currently on chapter 8 and so far it feels like a great book.
What about the future?
I have already got an idea for the game/application I'm going to make.
Right now it feels very hard (if not impossible) to make, but I'll try to take it one step at the time and implement the different parts of the game as I learn. I will not reveal exactly what kind of game it will be, but it will be about education and geography.
If I find the project to be too hard I will try to make something a bit easier first, so I won't get frustrated and quit.
How often will I update this blog?
This is actually the first time ever I'm using a blog so I'm not sure how much time it's going to consume but I'll try to update it at least once a week (but don't be surprised if there comes an update almost every day ;) )
The blog will be mainly about how I'm progressing but I might also post about other stuff (relevant stuff, of course)
PS. Like I said, this is the first time I'm using a blog so any tips are welcome. What can I improve, what about design, layout, etc. Any suggestion is welcome!
That's all for today.
I hope you'll enjoy the blog,
feel free to post comments and questions etc.