When I started on this adventure to learn Java and in turn learn android I thought this journey was going to be easy. My assumptions were based on the fact that I had previous programming experience. Granted that experience was well over 10 years ago and involved QBasic, Pascal, and Visual Basic.
Java and object-oriented programming are difficult and confusing subjects to master. I am continuing on my journey and I am fully dedicated to teaching myself the skills. The time involved in this endeavor is much greater than I anticipated.
My advice to anyone trying to accomplish this task without a solid programming background, is to seek out a classroom environment or a dedicated friend/tutor. Another requirement for this endeavor is lots and lots and lots of coffee.
Hi there, fun to read your quest to learn Android. I seem to be in the same situation as you where, I learned visual basic about 10 years ago, and did some asp web programming and have some SQL experience but never wrote one line of object oriented code.
Do you still recommend ‘Head First Java, 2nd Edition’ to start my own quest? I would like to be able to create some simple Android apps, and since I’m out of a job, I have plenty of time now…
I think it got me in the right Direction to build an Android App. Now if you looking to learn programming to better your career chances, I might think of learning something different from Java right now.
i thought i was alone. i too many moons ago was doing programming in assembly language mainly writing utilities, i started out with the zx speccy 48k and then for the commodore 64. a months ago i tried to get with the android laguage and still cannot get my head around it.
im copying examples from books but some how it all doesn’t make sense in my head, to make matters worse all sites and most books aproach the learning curve from the same angle “hello android”, “hello world” or other useless examples that will not help the new beginner.
back in the back to do programming all you had to do was learn the language instructions and have a good imagination of what you wanted.
what i see in android, that one is nearly required to know the ins and out of classes and all the ins and outs of 1000’s of api’s
blocking me from progressing… this android java stuff is for new developers who have not got 15 years of programming baggage or for users who have time and/mmoney