I've been a software engineer for 40 years, and have taught myself -- let's see: BASIC, assembler on 6-8 different platforms, C, C++, Java, Modula 2, Pascal, PL/I, several PL-whatever languages for IBM internal use -- all from reading the reference manuals. Even designed my own language for doing automatic code generation. The only formal courses I've ever taken were in FORTRAN and HTML/CSS. Recently had a Nokia phone given to me (by Nokia) for my participation in Qt work, though 9 months ago I'd never heard of Qt.
I agree that Android should be fairly easy to learn, but it's a lot easier for me to learn if I can read the specs rather than try to infer them from examples. And there's no reason at all that one should have to resort to trial and error to divine the specs of an interface -- if it's necessary it's an indication of poorly written documentation. On Jul 16, 10:35 am, "Maps.Huge.Info (Maps API Guru)" <cor...@gmail.com> wrote: > I can only speak from my personal experience. > > I've been a software engineer for more than 30 years and in that time > have learned at least a dozen languages. I started Android cold, with > no Java experience at all. It took me 3 months to develop my first > application and I've been learning more every day. It's been a bit > over a year now and I think I'm starting to get the basics of how > Android really works. > > I'm a learn by example type person, so the best tutorial for me is a > well written example. References are only to see what classes, methods > and properties are available, not to teach me anything. I like Mark's > books best, mostly because they are quite comprehensive and easy to > search. I have purchased just about every Android book available. I > haven't looked at a book in a couple of months and instead have used > code.google.com's extensive library of open source projects to help me > when I'm stuck or looking for ideas. Another method is the old trial > and error one. > > Another real benefit has been the various Android give-away programs > that I've been lucky enough to participate in. I've had 4 Androids > (Google ION, 2 Droids, Evo) handed to me in the last year, and this > has really proved invaluable to get a properly working app that works > on virtually every device. I bought a Nexus one for personal use as > well (AT&T version) and that helped debug my Froyo updates. > > The bottom line with Android, at least in my experience: Android is a > relatively easy system to learn and get started with but like any > complex system, it takes at least a year of hard work to get any real > traction with it. There may be some that take to this stuff like a kid > to candy, but for me, it required hard work and dedication. > > -John Coryat -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
