Android

My Software Development class is spending the rest of the semester doing something very cool: learning how to develop software for Google's mobile OS, Android. At first, I thought we were all going to get phones to work with, but sadly, that's not the case. Instead, we're using an emulator, which looks pretty cool.

I don't know why this emulated phone only has 50% battery...

The actual code used for programs is Java, and the system for UI layout is very similar to the Swing Java UI that we learned in Intro CS. However, the big difference is that the actual layout design is specified in an XML file, instead of in the source code, which makes way more sense. With Swing, you had to write a bunch of code that said things like SetLayout(blah), or addItemToLayout(), setAttribute(foo), and all kinds of things that really had nothing to do with your source code. On Android, as you can see in the background in the picture, it's all done in XML, and the actual source code doesn't have to mess with the layout if you don't need to.

Oddly, this "homework" assignment for this class (creating a framework for a contact manager in Android) has required a lot more work and figuring out than most of the "projects" we've done, because I've never used anything like this platform before. I don't really know where this blog post is going, but I might write more about Android, assuming we learn some cool stuff in this class. I'm hoping I can come up with a good idea for a project to work on on my own after the class, too, because Android development would definitely be a useful skill to have in my toolbox.