Now that my first app is complete, I figured I would go over my thought process.

You can find a video of this at the bottom of the page and a link to the source code here.

I created an app based on a coding challenge from the codingkata website. After completing the coding challenge in Java, I decided to take it a step further and build and Android app based on my work.

This was early 2019 and at that point, I hadn’t seen any projects through to completion. Granted I did have multiple smaller apps I’d built to get acclimated, but I had yet to create a project of my own.

I kept coming up with ideas for apps. Small utilities here and there. But I never actually sat down, planned out how it would work, and worked it from beginning to end. I would occasionally start Android Studio and just make some goofy thing for the hell of it.

A list of my favorite songs, an image on a blank background, but nothing too major. This time it was different. This time, I would doodle away on my notepad coming up with the different Activities and figuring out how to bring my vision to life (click below).

I’ve created at least 15 different apps over the years, but only one of them made it to the Play Store. The reason is simple – consistency.

I had a goal every week to make changes, and discuss them here on Coding Fanatic. It didn’t matter how big or small – something had to be done. And as I stuck with it, I started to see the evolution. I would look at my progress, the commits, the articles, the videos, and I’d say “Wow, I’m actually doing it!” And once I built up the momentum, it was almost impossible to stop.

Like I said, I made changes every week no matter how big or small. But some of those weeks had small changes. One week I might build an Activity but another week I would fix a single bug. Nevertheless, my work didn’t stop. And once I decided to implement a back end and make my project more robust, the same remained true.

It really does pay off to commit to a project. Even if you can only do a little at a time, keep on doing it.

I also have to give myself a hand for having completed this app with Java considering how many developers have moved on to Kotlin. That being said, my next venture will be to learn Kotlin. I want to keep abreast of changes in the Android Development world and learning this new skill will do just that.

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