Forem: Kluivert

My Journey as a Developer

Kluivert — Fri, 24 Apr 2020 09:22:19 +0000

Hello there, I'm kluivert, a student and an Android developer from Nigeria. I started programming in 2016, however my journey to being an Android developer started in 2017. I learnt Java for 5 months before starting Android, I still remember the YouTube channels that helped me, they are "NewBoston, ProgrammingKnowledge and Duckacademy(a website).". They taught me from scratch, programming was more than just code to me, the idea that I could build awesome things right on my computer was exhilarating and thus my passion grew more and more. I created several teams although they all fell apart due to no funding and me being less experienced. When I entered the University, I was really happy to build something for my school since not very many people knew or had interest in programming, I met a lot of wonderful people in my first year, the likes of Victor (the first Android developer I met in person), Kevwe (web developer with great ideas) , Tammy (talented designer and developer) and of course others who didn't know how to code but loved technology. I was still a beginner though when I built my first app, it was a quiz app for my school, Victor later joined the project.

When I think about the app's code base, I wanna cry cause it was really crazy that I wrote that code, i mean crazy in a bad way but anyway learning is an everyday thing, I'm glad I'm better today. My journey as an Android developer has been exciting, sad and filled with passion. I recall getting a new laptop and a firm I wanted to work with requested that I use Linux but stubborn me couldn't leave windows at the time cause I felt Linux was hard, however i use Linux mint today after understanding how cool it is and also after windows messed up a project i was about completing. Funny right?.

Going to the hub more often for meet ups was a practice I started in my second year, Victor and I went to almost every meet up together and of course every meet up was awesome. Ken Saro wiwa innovation hub is the hub I have visited the most, an amazing hub and the hub I'm most familiar with, the manager and other leads are doing an amazing job putting together the tech community.

I taught few people programming and became a mentor at the Alc 4.0 program, it was a wonderful experience meeting newbies with the passion for knowledge and meeting awesome developers too, one of those people I met was Wisdom and Jason. I understand you don't know any of them but I mention names anyway so you don't get confused with the story. Wisdom gave me insights to developer community, what I should learn and how I should build myself and other important things. My first official job came through wisdom, I'll forever be grateful for that(always) and although the experience wasn't how I expected, I'm still glad it helped me develop myself even more.

The journey of a developer isn't easy, there's always something new to learn every day, a better approach, plugin, language or software. There's always something new and thus you constantly have to learn and practice. Over the course of my journey since i got my first project, I have sent over a 100 applications and even Dev.to is amongst those applications, no exaggeration, a lot of rejection and reasons why they've decided to move on and even some that won't even get back to you. Lol. It's been absolutely frustrating but still this is a journey not a destination, just cause it's rough today doesn't mean it'll always be. I started programming cause I love it not cause of the money and besides i have people to prove wrong as well, so it's forward always, continue learning and getting better until the testimony.

So dear devs looking for a job but still haven't found one, don't give up, keep being awesome with committing and pushing, writing better codes, learning more and being a better developer. It'll be fine. Passion first, if you don't love what you do, you won't give your best, so keep loving being a developer and even if you can't build awesome things, build the small things in an awesome way.

Stay safe guys...

OncreateView in Fragments(Android) has been deprecated

Kluivert — Mon, 27 Jan 2020 13:26:29 +0000

Hello guys, ummm basically fragments can work fine without the 'OncreateView' method.

Remove the OncreateView method and inflate your layout in the "Fragment()" and it will be "Fragment(R.layout.activity_main)".

Try that and it works fine. that's all.

Dear junior developers

Kluivert — Mon, 27 Jan 2020 13:14:51 +0000

Dear junior developers, i know the journey isn't easy, that burning desire to grow and learn more, that feeling that you aren't good enough. i totally understand but trust me, if you keep pushing,

Pun Intended, drop a comment if you get it.

you'll defintely get to that part where you smile and beat your chest for writing that code you think you couldn't write some time ago.

Don't forget to live as well, being a developer doesn't mean you don't have a life. Some advice i can give are

Eat healthy
Go to the gym
Make good friends
Set aside time to catch up with the world( a movie or song or sport)
Code for an hour at least every day.

That's all. Have a wonderful week

Variables in kotlin

Kluivert — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 19:33:38 +0000

Welcome back everyone to another brief learning of kotlin and today we will be talking about variables.

TADA!!!!

Now let's start, first i wanna believe you aren't a newbie in programming but if you are, no problemo.

Alright you'll need Inteli J Idea installed on your computer for starts, don't forget java jdk as well. Here are the respective links to get them.

https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/download/index.html#section=linux

https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk12-downloads-5295953.html

If you already had them, great let's begin right away.

So kotlin has data types, what are data types you ask?
consider them as containers carrying different information/data.

How exactly?

Say we different cups lined up, those cups are the containers but what they have inside is what makes them different. We use these different data in building cool stuffs and passing information to our computer.

Examples of data types are:

1.Int = Integers

String = Bunch of characters such as texts or words.
Double = Decimal digits
Float = Decimal digits too but smaller than double

As the name implies, a double has 2x the precision of float[1]. In general a double has 15 decimal digits of precision, while float has 7.

Here's how the number of digits are calculated:

double has 52 mantissa bits + 1 hidden bit: log(253)÷log(10) = 15.95 digits

float has 23 mantissa bits + 1 hidden bit: log(224)÷log(10) = 7.22 digits

This precision loss could lead to truncation errors much easier to float up

Char = characters of the 26 alphabets
Boolean = True or false

Next: How to define variables in kotlin

So open your Inteli J idea and create your kotlin project.

You declare variables in two ways in kotlin.

Using "var" or "val"

Difference:
var means you can assign a different value different from the initial value to the variable whenever you want.

example:

//initial value
var kot:Int = 8

//new value

kot = 10

println(kot)

Output = 10

Using val

val kot:Int = 8

kot = 6

(Editor throws error "kot cannot be assigned a value").

That's for today. I'm sorry guys but i promise more posts.
Feel free to ask your questions as well.

Here's how you'd define variables of different data types

val a:Double = 4.8d
val b:Float = 5.0
val c:Char = 'g'
val d:Strinfg = "Hello"
val e:Boolean = true

Thank you

Introduction to kotlin section1

Kluivert — Fri, 30 Aug 2019 13:45:51 +0000

Hello guys, so i decided to start the kotlin series and today i'll be giving you an introductory class to it.

History of kotlin

• First appeared in 2011, Current stable release 1.3.41.

• On Feb 2012, open sourced.

• Kotlin v1.0 was released on 15 February 2016.

• At Google I/O 2017, Google announced first-class
support for Kotlin onAndroid.

• Kotlin v1.2 was released on 28 November 2017.
Sharing code between JVM and Javascript.

• On May 7 2019, Google announced Kotlin as a first
preferred language for Android app developers.

What is kotlin?

“Kotlin is a new programming language targeting JVM, Android

and even JavaScript.”

Modern and Statically typed
Interoperable with java 100%
Works anywhere java does
Targets Native, Javascript, JVM and Android
Object oriented and also a functional language too
Open source
Developed by Jetbrains( yea the geeks who build our loveable Android studio).

What's kotlin about?

Why kotlin?

• It is a fun language and costs nothing to adopt.

• Tired of Java, JavaScript ? Concise language.

• Helps you to be more productive. No runtime
overheads.

• Everywhere

• Push from Google and Android community.

• Cool language features.

• Functional Nature. Solves nullability problem

KotlinEveryWhere( kotlin's usage)

• Android Developers (JVM)

• Backend Developers (JVM)

• IOS Developers (LLVM) - Haven't seen this in action though

• Windows Developer (LLVM) - Haven't seen this in action either

• Javascript Developers

Well we will stop here today and brace yourself for another section(Kotlin basics).Thank you..

Drop comments if any and don't forget to share.

Why you should switch to kotlin as an android developer

Kluivert — Wed, 28 Aug 2019 11:12:57 +0000

About two years ago, Google announced kotlin as the official language for android development and since then Google have been trying their best to make developers adapt to it.

Today i'll be giving you reasons why you should start to use kotlin for developing android apps, here are some of my reaons.

Kotlin is simpler and concise - defining classes and variables in kotlin can be pretty easy and small lines of code.

an example would be this

var variable:Int = 10
var string:String = "Hello World"

Kotlin allows nullability - yes to making your variables null in value.
Kotlin is very expressive - from methods, control statements and classes.
Kotlin is more demanded in android development - most companies specialised in the development of android apps now require kotlin devs when hiring.

There's more to kotlin but these are few points of mine tho. I do hope you find reasons to consider learning kotlin as an android developer.
Thank you.

Let me know in the comment section if you want posts on how to get started with kotlin, i'll be happy to post such topics and hope you'll learn. thank you and have a wonderful day

Making Android studio look cooler.

Kluivert — Tue, 20 Aug 2019 14:13:55 +0000

Hey there guys!, today i'll be showing you how to make your Android studio look more prettier.

Step 1. Open Android studio, go to settings.

Step 2. Look for plugins, then click on it.

Step 3. You should see a tab (marketplace, installed and updates), click on market place and search for "Material Theme UI". download the plugin.

Step 4. Android studio will ask for restart, well restart and plugin will be active and then you can select the theme you want on android studio, you can also customize it more on the appearance settings(Settings).

Hope you like it?. Alrighty then. Have a wonderful day....