Android Programming Pushing The Limits

[Carri Seargent]

Allof these positions represent different skill levels and entry points for anyone who wants to begin learning to code for Android. They also offer this teaching from different perspectives, from developing within Kotlin to a purely Java-focused course depending on what you feel most comfortable with.

Its problems and solutions include hardware specifics such as cameras or software problems such as interfaces or location services. As a referencing guide, the huge size of this publication only adds to its usefulness in solving common problems.

However, this book is one of the best of the current ones and builds on the Java knowledge that Android app developers already have. This makes the transition from using Java to using Kotlin as painless as it can possibly be for current developers.

It essentially teaches you Kotlin through the practice of using Kotlin to write applications, but this of course means that this book may not be the best for beginners. The increasing complexity of the guide also means that you can stop or start where you feel the most comfortable, giving room for experienced professional programmers to jump in where they want.

From Google Play services to pushing the boundaries of Android SDK, anyone who wants to reach expert level programming can get use out of this publication. However, advanced Android developers may want to look for something slightly more advanced to further their skills.

This includes coding tips as well as guides for Firebase and Google Play Android APIs. Programming in the text focuses on Java rather than Kotlin, so rejoice Java users! Although that may be a put-off for some, the guide is still absolutely worth a read for anyone interested in Android mobile app development.

This is a comprehensive guide designed to kickstart developing with Kotlin. The guide provides readers with the skills necessary to scale-up apps they are taught how to build within the book, making it perfect for those going on to build even more apps for Android.

By creating apps dedicated for the Android platform rather than porting them over from iOS, developers can create a more intuitive product that is more likely to sell well, rather than just a carbon copy port.

This is one of the best guides for those who want to up their security. The perfectly explained examples take readers through step by step how vulnerabilities in their apps could be exploited by malicious third parties.

Like the job market as a whole, making a career in Android programming is a competitive goal. However, everyone has to start somewhere and there are few better places to start than our top 10 Android development books.

The coolest technology to emerge over the last decade is the smartphone -- its had a huge impact on our lives. Today, 3/4 of all Americans own a smartphone and I bet you are reading this webpage on your phone, no?

We intend to have fun this term even in these difficult times. To make things less stressful (there is a lot of coding/debugging in this class) you can pair code all the MyRuns assignments with one other student. You can meet on Zoom discuss code, problems, share solutions, bugs, etc., but you have to write your own code and submit it. This will help counter a sense of isolation while hacking. The CodeIt assignments (which are quick small assignments that reinforce techniques (unit testing, edge cases) have to be done by yourself. Projects are group oriented. As a result, there is a lot of opportunity for you to connect with other students in the class, the TAs and yours truly.

The goal of this course is to teach students how to design, implement, test, debug and publish smartphone applications on java based android phones. Students will learn how to take their innovative ideas from conception to the android market through a series of rigorous hands-on programming assignments and group projects.

This is an introductory course aimed at undergraduate students (but graduate students are most welcome) who have Java programming experience. However, there is a significant amount of programming in this course requiring a commitment on the part of the student.

Topics covered: the android development environment including the Android Studio IDE; key programming paradigms; UI design including views and activities; data persistence including SQLite; content providers; messaging and networking; phone sensors, location based services (e.g., Google Maps), background services; broadcast receivers; cloud programming; and publishing applications to the android market.

Android programming concepts are reinforced through a set of thematic programming exercises that introduce these topics and incrementally allow the student to build a complex application; that is, programming labs form a set of components that collectively implement a continuous sensing application. The resulting phone app allows user to log their exercises (e.g., walks, runs) and display them on Google maps.

A key part of this course is group projects where students will work in small teams onjoint problem solving. This should be a fun, creative and group-oriented experience. You will need to be organized to do well in the allotted time.

We will use Canvas mostly to disseminate grades and to connect you to Piazza. The best way to get answers to programming problems is crowdsourcing -- so the first time someone comes across a problem and we know the answer - everyone sees it. I encourage students to actively use Piazza -- it's a great system. All class announcements will be through Canvas/Piazza.

There are 5 weekly programming assignments over the first 7 weeks. These labs are designed to help students learn the android programming environment and key programming paradigms. MyRuns1 through MyRuns4 will be graded and MyRuns5 is optional. We are making it an optional to reduce the workload. Note, MyRuns5 is related to using the Firebase cloud which is key to the project phase. Students can either do MyRuns5 or learn the material for the project phase.

Labs are graded on completeness of the required features, the correctness of the functionality, and the robustness: note, if your lab crashes it will not be graded and you will have to resubmit a working version with 10% penalty against your lab grade. Please make sure there are no crashed in submitted code -- that is the take home

You should download, inspect and run all code examples in the notes (.zip files) to fully understand concepts and patterns taught in class. However, you cannot under any circumstances ``cut and paste'' these examples into your solutions for your submissions. You should use these coding examples as a learning tool; always code your own intrepreation of these coding examples in your solutions if you choose to use the patterns; that is, look at the code and understand how it works but always code your own versions of these patterns if you use them in your solution. If you cut and paste any class code there will be a 10% penalty and you will have to recode and resubmit your lab.

The MyRuns document captures the complete app specification and lab assignment information. You should read through the design specification for the complete MyRuns app a couple of times before starting the lab sequence. For each lab we give you a running example of the solution called an APK. Your job is to functionally replicate each APK.

We will have 3 short assignments called CodeIts. These super short assigments do not require you to write much if any code and cover finding edge cases, debugging, unit testing and profiling code. We will grade CodeIts simply. We will only look at functionality -- does the app do what we asked. If it does not work at all you get 0. If it partially completed the CodeIt you get 50%. If you complete it you get 100%..

Projects are made up of a small (2 people) teams and require strong collaboration and a problem solving mindset. The goals of this activity are to help you develop the confidence, skills, and habits necessary to write real phone apps while part of a multi-person team.

We use the Dartmouth Computer Science Gitlab Server for submission of assignments. You will need to go to the server and sign up using your Dartmouth mail addresses - not gmail. You will need to add the TAs to your CS65 repos.

Note, we take a snap shot of your repo at midnight on the submission date. So to submit you have to make sure you add and commit all your local files so your repo is up to date at 11.59 pm. Please make sure your code works and does not crash.

Our late policy seems a bit harsh at first but here's the reasoning. Each lab builds on the previous lab so falling behind is a taxation unto itself. To balance this late policy I add this sweetner: you get two free 24 hour pass without penalties. These are atomic units -- you can't divide them up, before you ask. Take it when you like but put a note in your README.txt file and email the TA.

You would be amazed at how easy it is to tell when people work together on problem sets, particularly coding exercises. Think about the simple shell commands we run against your source code from labs and projects to compare your lab assignments and projects against every other assignment and project ever submitted since this course started - it takes less that a millisecond to run these checks - no effort on our behalf.

"Moss (for a Measure Of Software Similarity) is an automatic system for determining the similarity of programs. To date, the main application of Moss has been in detecting plagiarism in programming classes. Since its development in 1994, Moss has been very effective in this role. The algorithm behind moss is a significant improvement over other cheating detection algorithms (at least, over those known to us)"

Similarly, we know how to use Google too. You should not under any circumstance look at or use code from students that have previously taken CS65. The message is simple - please don't make life unpleasant for all of us by breaking these rules. The penalties for cheating at Dartmouth are severe, starting with suspension and including expulsion. If students cheat I will immediately give them a failing grade for the course and will push for their suspension from the college. The most depressing part of my academic career was catching two really nice students cheating -- they recieved failing grades from me and were suspended by the college. Please please please do not do this at any cost.

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