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How I made my first Android (also Java) app



Every moment when you do something for the first time is truly unforgettable. So my first Android app was not an exception and this blog post will not be the one.

The event

It was about half a year ago on VL Hackathon #4, a local hackathon provided by great people, mostly volunteers. Hackathon lasted for 48 hours and for this time these people treated us as well as they could.

Of course, I was not alone, there were two teammates Vasiliy Nikiforov and Peter Nazarov who are also in my study group. If you think that we already knew what to do and how to act on hackathons you're totally wrong, that was our first one.

Actually, we didn't even know how to use Android Studio!

But we picked the idea, not the best one (actually, I think one of the worst ideas we could pick :) ) , but the easy one, that  idea which we could implement within 48 hours without any knowledge about Android Development and with only one member of our team who knew Java at some decent level, it was Peter.

The idea

Our idea was an app about quotes, primarily motivational, so you can motivate yourself throughout the day (yes, I know, it's embarrassing for me to tell it every time). You can upvote/downvote existing quotes and even add your own! Not the best, but appropriate for our level.

The process

These 48 hours are unforgettable for me. By the way, I came on the hackathon with the flu so the pills were my breakfast, lunch and dinner, but I was so excited so I just didn't notice my illness. It was 48 hours of googling, reading and coding (and about 4 hours sleeping), it was incredible 48 hours.


Me and Vasiliy
These 4 hours of sleep

The result

But not everything was like in a fairy tale.

Most of the features of our app were implemented just about 2 hours before the end and debugged in the moment before the presentation. Here what it looked like at presentation:

You can add your own quote!
Never do screenshots like this. Use demo mode!
Favorited quote.
It was really embarrassing to present our because it was really bad implemented and we knew it but we did it! We just did the best we can in our situation and we knew that the second time will be better, and third time even better than the second.

We didn't pursue result, but we did pursue the process. I think that to achieve some results you should go through the process and if you do it again and again, results will be better and better.

The people

Actually, the coolest thing about this event that I meet a bunch of great people with whom I stay connected even now. Not only tech guys, there was the cosplay band who invited me to do the cosplay photo set about Scott Pilgrim and I was the Scott Pilgrim!


Perfect match!
So this kind of events can provide you with the connections you don't even think about. Why are you still reading this? Go find any and participate!

Summary


So what I want to say with this post is don't be afraid of failure, just do what you want to do and if it doesn't work as you want don't worry too much, You are just starting out it is not the end of the world (this is, actually, the reason why I'm writing this post right now). So just go and do something you was afraid to do, and show it to people!

See you in the next one, peace.

P.S if you want to see the code check out my GitHub.


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