I am not an engineer, I am a finance guy, but I did some coding in high school and college (so I'm not all bad). I do a lot of work with the wireless industry, and I am frustrated that there are more worthwhile mobile applications. I have gotten so frustrated that I want to start writing my own simple applications. How do I learn to program for Android? Where should I start? What programming language should I use? Can anybody recommend a good book on that language for beginners?
Where to start - programming for mobile phones
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Re: Where to start - programming for mobile phones
#2For information on android take a look at the videos from the google i/o conference.
Re: Where to start - programming for mobile phones
#3This is the only Android book I'm aware of. I haven't read it though so I can vouch for it's quality.
http://pragprog.com/titles/eband/hello-android
The only supported language on Android is Java, so I'd stick with that.
Re: Where to start - programming for mobile phones
#4You might not like the idea but Windows Mobile is reasonably well represented as a phone platform and that gives you a reasonable choice of languages (probably) targeting the .NET Framework - certainly C# and Visual Basic. At least that would be a well documented and feature rich platform (although it does have it's lumps and bumps).
Attractive though Android is there is no shipping phone and thus a zero market (at the moment anyway) [We have developed an Android app but it's sitting on the shelf while we wait and see what happens].
Re: Where to start - programming for mobile phones
#5[deleted]
Re: Where to start - programming for mobile phones
#6I had to write a Java ME game two years ago and I learned nearly everything from the Sun Java ME site and Nokia's developer tools/docs/forums.
Good luck.
Re: Where to start - programming for mobile phones
#7I wrote a couple of programs in Python for my Nokia. It was fun.
Re: Where to start - programming for mobile phones
#8Consider focusing on one platform like iPhone or Android. Much frustration has come from engineers that are developing for an assortment of phones, it just sucks the life out of you.
Android is going to push you towards "Java". And iPhone will hook you with Objective-C. (Unless you focus on doing web-based apps, which may be a good way to get your feet wet.)
Re: Where to start - programming for mobile phones
#9Started reading 'The Objective-C 2.0 Programming Language' (http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/Ob...) today for an iPhone library I have to write and I was wondering if there was a big difference between objective-c 1.0 and 2.0 (I can't seem to find any books on 2.0 at my university library).
Also, can anyone recommend a good cocoa book?
Re: Where to start - programming for mobile phones
#10If you want your app to run on majority of cell phones out there J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition) is currently your best bet. It may not be as feature rich as IPhone SDK or Google Android but it is probably the most ubiquitous platform for cell phones today. You can download a free WTK (Wireless Tool Kit) from java.sun.com and there are good tutorials on the same site for J2ME beginers.
One thing to remember is if you make use of any of the even a little bit fancy functionality of the cell phone through J2ME (SMS send/receive, Phone book integration or location based services) your app probably won't work on real handset outside the emulator - at least in US. All cell phone carriers here are control freaks and they have turned off all those permissions for any "not officially blessed" third party app. This is the main reason for the lack of any worthwhile mobile applications in the first place!