Reflection on one of the tutorials.
This week we are asked to reflect on one of the tutorials which we have been to this week or last week. I have decided to reflect on the "App Building Tutorial" given by Professor Kevin Moran. Going into this tutorial, I had never had any experience with app building and did not know much about the android operating system. It was interesting to start with the history of android and see how it has become the number one overall operating system in the world. It was also very interesting to learn that the code is open source which makes it easier to customize and highly modifiable. I had not known that the code was so easily accessible to all.
Learning more about what goes into creating an app made me realize how complicated it actually is. We learned about various developer tools like the android profiler, android layout editor, android layout inspecter, and espresso UI test cases. Developers use all of these tools to create apps. We also learned about android app components. This part reminded me of a recipe – to create a cohesive app, all of these app components need to be included and work together well. The first of these components was the android activities (what is on the screen). I had honestly thought this was the only component of an app, because it is the only one which I ever see. This component dictates various states which an app could find itself in (like launching the app, killing the app). The following four components were all new to me. The next was android services, which is the mechanism for keeping the app running in the background. I knew that apps ran in the background, but I did not know what went into this. It was interesting to learn about why apps would want to run in the background and what they would want to do. The next component was broadcast receivers. This is the component which indicates when the battery is low or when a screenshot picture is captured. I know that my phone has these components, but it is something I had never thought about. Then there is android content providers which mangages a shared set of app data. It was interesting to learn about how data can be shared or not shared with apps and what they would want to do with this data. The final component was activating components, like asynchronous messages called intents. This is yet another component which I had not realized were a part of creating an app. Learning about what goes into making an app just made me realize how complex it actually is.
The last part of the tutorial was creating our own "to do" app using android studio. We did this in groups which made it a little bit easier, but overall I found the task difficult. Professor Moran made the tutorial easier by having us take everything step by step. I really enjoyed seeing exactly what goes into creating an app, but it was so complicated, and I am not sure I would want to do it again. However I did enjoy having a product at the end which was something that we had all created and done (kind of) by ourselves. Overall I loved this tutorial and learned so much which I had not even thought about before. Now whenever I am using an app on my phone, I think about all the components that went into creating it, and how complex all the applications on my phone really are.