One of the things that I want to do this year is get a solid grasp of Android. I have dabbled and played but never sat down and really studied it. Back in December, I really started studying it. At first I was struggling with it. This is strange as I don’t generally struggle with the basics of any language. But with Android, it was such a fiddly language that I was running out memorizing space about half way through every book I tried. Then it came to me. My issue was I was memorizing the wrong thing. I was missing the simplest truth. Android was possible the most cookbook-able language I have ever run across in my career.
Umm, most cookbook-able language? WTF?
When I say cookbook-able language, I mean a pattern driven language. You want to create a button in C#. Drag, drop, double click on control and BAM, you are ready to rock and roll with your buttony self. That can’t be done with Android. You create the button, then you go to the fragment or activity and then you build all that wiring yourself. You might even make a layover at the strings.xml to do a little configuring. Flow with the language’s rhythm, that was the missing piece. I was refusing to dance.
So what does that do for me?
It gives a different paradigm for you to study such a language. Every single language is different. JavaScript is very much built with a different world view than Java or C#. If you try to take JavaScript like a normal OOP language and you will fail to ever master it. I did the same sort of thing with Android.
As a result, I am going to create a cookbook for Android. Shockingly, I have not seen anything like what I am envisioning. I will be publishing several of the recipes here over the next few months so keep reading. This is going to be exciting.