Gadgetory

so in some of my previous videos I've talked you through how to make games and apps in just seven minutes and hopefully you've seen that it can be quite easy to get something decent up and running but there's quite a big difference between making a simple app or a game and actually understanding a whole programming language and mastering the art of coding that's quite a bit more difficult and unfortunately it's also particularly difficult when it comes to Android development because with Android you need to learn Java which is already quite a complex programming language and object-oriented programming language with classes and methods you need to understand XML which is the code use for the layout files you need to understand the product structure how to use the Android SDK and yeah it's a bit of an uphill struggle learning how to develop can be a daunting process for anyone starting out and it's easy to get put off before you really get started so in this video I want to share some tips that can help you to make learning any programming language Android development in particular that little bit easier so whether you start first of all it makes sense to start with a good book I learned to program from a book but I would say you want to approach using a book in the correct way so find yourself a basic introduction to Java or Android development and read it but don't read the entire thing as you read the first few chapters you'll hopefully you ever take some notes and understand the basics of how things work understand things like if statements and variables but as you get further into the book things are going to get a little bit more abstract of choose and you might find yourself starting to struggle so what I'd say is often a good way to start is to read the first couple of chapters make some notes and then when you stop understanding what's being said that's when you stop and take a break from it and it's at that point I think it's a good idea to start making a simple project so that's my second tip is to start making some kind of project really early on because Java or C sharp or any other programming language that's a massive subject matter you're never going to completely master any single programming language there's always going to be new techniques new commands that you aren't familiar with instead then instead of trying to learn how to program for Android instead of learning Java learn how to build the thing you want to build so can't with a simple project and just learn what you need in order to make that project so perhaps be a calculator or perhaps it could be a quiz which I've recently talked you through on this channel and by doing this what you're doing is you're contextualizing what you're learning you've got an end goal in mind you're seeing how those statements and how those principles work in practice instead of just thinking of it in an abstract arbitrary sense this also gives you motivation and it helps you to see how everything works together and get familiar with the tools you need to use the IDE etc and it's great because at the end of it you'll have a program and an app that you can show your friends and you can try yourself and that's quite a rewarding feeling too so instead of just trying to understand the Java set out to make yourself a little game a little project and that is the key word here is little simple you need to make sure that first project isn't anything too ambitious cuz a lot of people will say to me I want to learn how to program and I'll say why they say because they want to make an app that will revolutionize the way people use their money and I'm like well no offense but that's such a huge owned undertaking it involves collaboration with many other people it's gonna be cloud-based it's just far more complicated than you should be using for your first project so build up to that grand scheme you've got in your head sure but for your first project count something really simple learn to make that and then from there you'll find you need to learn new things and that's when you start to make these projects more more complicated and then you'll learn more and more stuff and as you go you'll find that hopefully you pick up more and more knowledge until we get to the point where you can say yes I do understand Java tip number three is to reverse engineer to ask questions to approach programming in a collaborative sense and I like I say not to try and master the entire programming language don't get too disheartened if when it comes to resizing a bitmap or something else like that you need to look online and find the method that someone else has done and say can I use this in my project because that's how a lot of programming is done a lot of us don't actually remember every single statement we're going to use we just google it like anyone else you need to have that basic knowledge and a basic understanding of how programming languages work and how to structure the particular programming language that you're interested in but beyond that there's nothing wrong with borrowing code with reverse engineering and picking things apart with reading online with checking how things work with looking for better ways to do things always do your research often you'll find yourself head against the wall trying to solve a problem one actually could have solved it with just a single line of code because someone's already written a class that does that job for you so like I said don't be afraid to reach out and don't expect to know everything and to do it all yourself we all need a little help from time to time as we develop and get more advanced you're going to need to find more resources to pick up more information and it all depends on what kind of learner you are but for me I find the easiest way to grasp a new subject or to build a new app is to find the video online that will talk me through it a video tutorial and the great thing about that is that you'll see them using the same tool as you and you can literally follow along as they're doing whatever they're doing you can see how they set things up you can follow the code as they do it any errors they make them explain and explain everything as they go and say there's no way you can miss a step because it's so annoying when you try and follow something from an article or from a book you build something and then it doesn't work and Yorkshire white whereas with a video you can rewind it and see exactly what they wrote exactly what order they did it in and how they use the tool so annoying what song goes insert this and you're like where's the insert button I don't know so that's why videos are so useful for learning to code and learning to use any tool for that matter one more piece of advice is that when you're looking for information either on Google or on YouTube make sure it's up to date and relevant because Android in particular is constantly developing new techniques are always being introduced new features and if you find an article that was written a year and a half ago it might be completely obsolete at this point so when you're searching on Google a quick tip is to go to the tools and make sure that you're searching for content that was added in the last year and that way you know it's up-to-date and you won't have any issues with things being deprecated or just obsolete at this point also important is that as you're learning make sure that you do the groundwork and you learn the basics and don't get too ahead of yourself that means things like learning to use debugging tools learning correct formatting and good practices whilst this might not be the most fun or exciting part of programming it will stand you in good stead for the future and you'll find that if you get into good habits now it'll make life a lot easier once you start working on massive projects and it's easier to prevent yourself getting into a bad habit than it is to fix a bad habit trust me I know my programming used to be really interesting debugging being particularly important of course because it means that if you've done something wrong you can find out what you did wrong rather than just staring at the code for hours and hoping that the solution will magically come to you which is again how I used to go about things another tip is to break things down and to learn them in a sensible order like I say unfortunately developing for Android is quite difficult because it involves lots of different components and sometimes it's hard to know am i learning Java at this point or am i learning to use the Android SDK and instead of trying to learn the whole thing at once then it can be a better idea to learn a bit at a time and in particular it's a good idea to learn Java first if you're struggling to dive straight into Android development maybe take a time out and learn how to use Java so you can find loads of Java IDs these are the tools you use to program job or a great one is bluej that's completely free you can download it and then you can write little programs they'll just print things out to the screen or work with numbers or ask the user questions and by getting familiar with that you'll then be able to see how that works in the context of Android development so when you come to use Android studio you've got a little bit more familiarity with it and it might even make sense to learn a completely different programming language altogether as I say Java itself is actually unfortunately quite a complex language to pick up it's very strict with its syntax and its structure if you make any small mistakes won't run at all and it doesn't read particularly like English and it's an object-oriented programming language so all of this makes it quite complicated to pick up for the first time even before you add the Android stuff on top of that so instead you could choose to learn the simple language to begin with just to familiarize yourself with some of the basic concepts of coding so I learned basic first and this is a much easier programming language it reads a lot more like English with big if-then statements and go to 10 pythons another very good one for beginners and c-sharp looks a lot like Java has only a few differences but I find it personally a little bit easier to pick up of course Android studio now also supports development with Cottman which is basically a slightly easier and more beginner friendly version of Java so that's another option this is the book I learned to program from by the way it's programming in quick basic quick basic being a version of basic that used to come packaged with DOS and old Windows laptops it's been well-loved like an old teddy bear with no cover coffee stains water stains it couldn't look more ancient but it's thanks to this book that I'm here today say there you go and of course if you really stuck with Android studio in Java then you could just make the leap to a completely different IDE that's an integrated development environment so that means that you're using a different tool to build your apps and some of these let you use different programming languages say for instance unity development is useful for making games and that lets you use c-sharp and some people find that much easier B for a or basic for Androids is a tool that lets you make Android apps using basic there's xamarin there's tons of options out there there's even game makers and app builders that will allow you to make tools and apps with very limited coding knowledge and the best of these are the ones that involve a little bit of coding understanding because that way you can then translate that idea and build on it to eventually make the leap to using the official tools from Google so everyone learns differently and of course you've probably got your own ideas of what can make learning to code easier if you do then please share them in the comments down below and I'm sure other people would like to read them I hope that some of these tips have been helpful for you and if they have then please consider liking this video share it around and subscribe to the channel for more like this and of course check out Anna Dragic on where we are your source for all things Android