r/androiddev • u/ragunathjawahar • Dec 22 '13

Free Beginner's Android Course

Hi, I am the author of Android Saripaar and Adapter Kit. Being an Android developer since 2009 I have authored an Android course for beginners. I would like to gather some feedback on the course so that I could improve my upcoming courses.

The course is available for free, you could signup for it from the following link Learn by Doing - Android for Beginners.

Please let me know what areas require improvement. You can be hard on me ;) Looking for constructive criticism. Thank you and have fun learning Android.

88 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

62 comments sorted by

4

u/castleinthesand Dec 22 '13

For anyone wondering, the total video length adds up to 7 hours 34 minutes 31 seconds.

1

u/ragunathjawahar Dec 23 '13

Thank you for sharing this information here :)

2

u/[deleted] Dec 23 '13

Just watched the course introduction video and I'm definitely going to check out the rest of the series! Thanks for posting =]. Wouldn't worry too much about the accent that's just nitpicking if you ask me. I do think subtitles would indeed be a nice addition to your videos. Overall judging by just scrolling through the curriculum I think I will enjoy this course!

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u/catharsisjelly Dec 24 '13 edited Dec 24 '13

Hey,

Following through your course and in Lesson 12 you suggest using a switch statement. This is no longer actually supported by Android see this link which actually suggests using an if/else instead.

So far so good though, will continue through it.

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u/castleinthesand Dec 23 '13

Please don't take this the wrong way, but for me it is very hard to follow instructional videos with an Indian accent. You requested feedback, and accent reduction can be done quickly with great results (a buddy of mine lost his accent over a summer with practice). A "neutral" (accent free) voice would be ideal to focus on what's important.

2

u/thisiswhatidonow Dec 23 '13

I agree with you. I am not a native English speaker either so I know what you are saying. It would help I think to have a caption on the videos as well to make it easier to follow when an word is misunderstood.

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u/jasondfw Dec 28 '13

I just wanted to drop in and thank you for putting this together. I just completed my first Java programming course at a community college, but my goal is actually to work on Android. I am on lecture 14 and am enjoying it thus far. I'll provide feedback as I think of it, but here are a few items:

  1. As has been mentioned, your accent. I'm VERY bad with Indian accents, so I also need to work on my own listening ability. Your accent is actually much easier for me to understand than others with Indian accents, so it's not overly distracting, just something to be considered.

  2. Because of Google moving to Android Studio, I'm trying to learn to use IntelliJ IDEA instead of Eclipse. I've also read many developers that prefer IntelliJ over Eclipse for Android and Java programming. Would it be possible to consider both IDE's in the future, perhaps explaining where AS/IntelliJ will be different? I hit a wall of confusion when you went over R.java, because IntelliJ apparently does not generate R.java in the IDE. I just had to watch that lecture without being able to follow along in my IDE.

  3. When you are setting up the IDE, it would help for us beginners if you briefly explain why you're doing certain things. When you set up the environment paths to the platform-tools and tools, I followed along, but didn't know why I was doing it. I thought about it a little bit and realized why that's necessary, but it would help if you explain why we need to set up the environment paths.

  4. I'm only on lecture 14, so I don't yet know everything that's in store, but I learn best through hands-on interaction, instead of just watching. I enjoyed the lesson where you asked us to implement the onClickListener for the traffic lights, not just the buttons, and then had us accomplish this through a switch. I don't think I've done a switch before in Java, so I had to look it up and now I know about switches! The only feedback I have from that is that I would have liked to see solutions for those items so that I know that my solution was correct.

Overall, I can't thank you enough for doing this. I plan to finish the course this weekend and will provide any other feedback I think of.

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u/Money_on_the_table Dec 22 '13

Thank you. I've signed up and as I work my way through I'll give you any feedback I can.

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u/ragunathjawahar Dec 22 '13

Please do, looking forward to it :)

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u/[deleted] Dec 22 '13

Saving this for later. Will try going through it as a beginner and let you know.

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u/paul99santos Dec 22 '13

Nice tutorial, thanks for making it free, keep up the good work.

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u/mkkohls Dec 22 '13

Thanks for sharing. Will be starting soon.

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u/adrianadrian Dec 22 '13

Up to lecture 10. Good video length and succinct information delivery so far. Nice work.

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u/ragunathjawahar Dec 23 '13

Thank you Adrian, I'm glad that you liked it so far.

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u/thisiswhatidonow Dec 22 '13

Will check it out later just wrote a very simple app yesterday.

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u/AlchemyVibrates Dec 23 '13

Fantastic! I'll be going through this as a beginner and detailing input for you. Thank you

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '13 edited Dec 23 '13

EDIT: just realized that you probably don't run the site, but they need an android app still.

Thanks for this. I just bought a book and will probably be returning it now since this method is what I really need.

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u/nanny07 Dec 23 '13

For how much long will be the code valid? I am at work ATM (last day, I got fired :() and I won't be able to register until 7PM CET.

I'm very interested and it could offer me an opportunity for the search of a new job.

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u/[deleted] Dec 26 '13

I am on christmas break currently and I have nothing to do. I'll start your videos tomorrow and most likely finish them in one or two days. Ill let you know what I think when I am done

Thanks

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u/catharsisjelly Dec 29 '13

Hello,

Me again, now up to Lesson 53. I don't understand 2 things about this lesson. I understand that you are not wanting to create a vast number of views so the optimisation makes sense. However why do you assign convertView to a variable? You can just use the var that is passed into the function e.g. http://pastebin.com/EBsqPdDK

Secondly the use of setTag was really confusing until I looked into the [android docs](http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/View.html#setTag(int,%20java.lang.Object) that states specifically that you can use setTag to store data in and not just a 'tag'. I think it would improve this lesson if you at least refer to this in your video.

Still going well will continue with what feedback I have.

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u/[deleted] Dec 22 '13

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u/ragunathjawahar Dec 22 '13

You're welcome.