How I learned to code, fall into mobile development and then just started to develop a business application!
About one and a half years ago I’ve decided to learn how to code and quickly ran into the first problem you may know as well…
What programming language do I choose as a beginner?!
I had no idea what a huge amount of programming languages are waiting for me out there but I had known this: I don’t want to learn Java. Why? Well, to be honest with you… I really don’t know why. Until today I just don’t want to learn Java for whatever reason.
After spending hours reading about programming languages and which one is “the best” to learn as a beginner, I’ve decided to learn Python.
It seems simple enough to learn (for somebody with absolutely no clue) and the possibilities to use it are more than I could have thought about.
Quick insertion: There is no “best” programming language, just pick the one you feel most comfortable with.
I started to learn the basics of python and therefore also the general basics of programming with a free course on Udemy.
Like many other beginners, I was quickly bored by the “stupidity” of adding two numbers together like in freaking elementary school.
And this ladies and gentlemen was my own huge stupidity as a learned a few weeks later…
As I already mentioned I’ve got bored and wanted to code all the crazy ideas spinning around in my head, so let’s go!
NOPE.
I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t even close to being ready and this is why you should take your time to learn the basics and learn them well.
Why? Just believe me, learn them well. You will quickly reach the point where you don’t have any clue what’s going on at all.
If you don’t learn the basics so well that know them by heart it will be getting really difficult to understand anything more complicated than adding two numbers together or printing out a string.
After this painful lesson, I was frustrated enough to stop doing anything with coding for the next two months.
After getting back to learning the basics and start developing sort of my own “style of coding” I started to understand more and more of other people's code, which is, by the way, an incredible feeling!
Things got better and better and I’ve started to write my first own little programs (e.g. fetching data of a website and things like that).
Then I accidentally ran into the Raspberry Pi and realized all the crazy and maybe even some stupid things I could build with this funky little green plate of electrical engineering.
So I decided to buy a Raspberry Pi 3B+ with some additional sensors, etc.
Then I used my Python programming skills, and the help of Google some times, and used the Raspberry to build a humidity and temperature surveillance systems.
I plugged everything together, hitting some chars on my keyboard and there we are… my first little machine.
Time for testing! Oh, by the way, the original thought behind this humidity thingy was to check if my “ventilate-the-room-behavior” was right.
NERD ALERT!
So I put the Raspberry with the sensors in my bathroom, plugged it in, started the script and here we are: DATA transferred to my computer every two minutes. (I literally felt like I’ve created gravity or electricity)
Maybe I’ll write an article about this little project. Do you want to know about this humidity measuring Raspberry Pi? Let me know!
But let’s continue the actual story.
After this, I wanted to expand my knowledge and started to look for the next project to learn and I’ve found Flutter.
At this time Flutter was quite new and not so many people used it, but I had this strange good feeling in my body that this could be a huge opportunity for me.
For those of you who don’t know what Flutter is: Flutter is an open-source mobile SDK developed by Google. Developers can build native-looking Android and iOS, web and desktop applications from one single code base.
(Flutter for the web is in a technical preview at this time, but I’m really impressed how good it’s running already)
I will write an article about Flutter and its current state in the next weeks, so stay tuned if you want to read it!
So I thought: “For all my ideas spinning around in my head, this could be the solution to build them”.
Then I started to read the docs, watching videos and trying things out in Flutter (or actually Dart as it is the programming language behind Flutter).
I was pretty impressed by how easy it actually was to build a mobile app in that really short amount of time and how freaking fast the code was!
Flutter compiles ahead of time into native, ARM and x86 libraries, but more about that in the upcoming Flutter article.
So after I’ve built up my skills in Flutter for around 5 to 6 months I’ve decided to build my first Flutter app for iOS and Android in production.
I began to grab my ideas and start to scribble on a piece of paper. After a few hours of thinking, designing (in my head) and getting inspiration on how to do different tasks I planned to implement I started to code.
After about a week with a workload of 6 hours a day, my application was ready for the first tests. I installed it on my personal device and started to try out every feature for about a thousand times, I guess.
After another two days of debugging, changing the UI and adding a few smaller features I’ve decided to take the app to by boss.
I’m working as a paramedic and the application should be used at the company I’m working at.
I showed up at the office of my boss and showed him the app and he was stunned and offered me, nearly instant, to use the app in the firm!
Since then I develop more and more applications for a variety of companies, including some own projects, and keeping track of the application for the emergency medical service (short: EMS).
The EMS-App is growing and more features are getting built-in from day to day.
So sometimes don’t think about it, just do! If you want to do something, just do it! Nobody is stopping you, keep following your dreams!
Yeah, I guess that’s my story in a short article and I hope you enjoyed reading it. Any questions or do you want to know more? Just contact me!
I would love to get in touch with you guys in the comment section!
Like, share, subscribe, build me a church, if you want to ;-)
I hope you doing well and we’ll be hearing from us soon in one of my next articles.
The next articles are getting more technical and with some code ;-)
Do you want to get in touch? Just hit me up on Instagram
(https://www.instagram.com/qubeta_apps/) or send me an e-mail to info@qubeta.de!
