More about Android-DE

Background

Having spent the best part of 20 years teaching Mathematics in and around the Swindon area, that feeling that retirement was finally calling came when we were hit by an unexpected Covid-19 pandemic in 2019.  By September of that year, I was abandoned by my teaching agency (I think they folded), I had no chance of getting a new contract and I didn’t qualify for the government furlough scheme.  But with the lockdowns and no proper income, what was I to do?

Luckily, I was signed up with Universal Credit and had gained a lot of help for a possible change in my career because of physically difficulties at that time.  This included bringing my hobby to the foreground.  

Turning Point

Going back to the bad old days of mainframe computers, reels of backup tapes that resembled the ones used in local cinemas and terminals with floppy disks,  I gained valuable knowledge in UNIX shell programming and C programming, and BASIC.   Then, over the years, as a teacher, I played around with another environment called Eclipse, which allowed me to attempt my first Android Programme. 

I managed to do a course on this at Swindon New College and it was during this time that I overheard a student talking to the instructor at the end of the class session.   He said, that he was worried about spending too much time learning Eclipse when a stable cut of Android Studio was now available.  The instructor pointed out that Eclipse was still the primary tool used in android development and that he doubted that the newer environment would be a serious contender.  

Foolishly, I ignored Android Studio for several years before realising my mistake.  In fact, Android Studio was the de facto integrated development environment (IDE) for Google’s operating system.  From that moment, I became a true disciple of Android programming.

Android-DE

During the Lockdown, I attended several courses online to beef up my background knowledge in android programming and software development, including courses in Java, Kotlin and Bitbucket (a repository for local cloud backup).  I began to polish up my first application MathPuzzler, ready for testing and publishing.  Android-DE is the company I created to own this and any new applications in the future. 

 

Back to Home