Day 1: Everything has to start somewhere.

Owen — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 14:51:38 +0000

Hello, this will be the record of my journey growing in my professional career.

A little bit about me: I’m currently an Android developer, and I’ve been doing that for 4 years. I won’t lie by saying I know everything. I want to make it clear from the start that some of my opinions and knowledge may be incorrect. Now that the cornerstone of this journey is set, I can tell you what this is about.

I asked our modern "GOD," ChatGPT, for a little guide on how to improve my knowledge with external resources (though I probably need to start relying less on ChatGPT—but my lazy brain loves it).

My goal right now is to really understand Android as a system and the phone’s resources. I know how to code applications, but do I understand them the way a watchmaker understands a watch? Honestly, I don’t. And maybe it’s not necessary to go that deep—but I want to.

Also, a friend introduced me to the world of cybersecurity, which caught my attention. I’ve already spent a year trying to learn (probably in the wrong way, as most of us do in this fast-paced world). So I decided to start fresh with this guide.

Today is Day 1 of the 6-month course that our "GOD" created for me. And it was easy.

🎯 Goal

Light tasks, reading, theory, notes, and small coding experiments.

📅 Day A (Office)

30 min: Read docs/tutorials (Android internals OR OWASP Mobile Top 10).

45 min: Small code kata / Kotlin exercise.

30 min: Reverse engineer an APK with JADX (look for interesting strings/secrets).

15 min: Quick reflection note (what I learned).

📖 What I Did

I decided to read about Android internals. It was a lot of theory about AOSP (Android Open Source Project). I already knew it was open source, but I learned that you can compile your own version and even make changes.

I practiced some small Kotlin exercises. They were easy because I took them from a site with 85 challenges. To be honest, I only did about 5 instead of the full 45 minutes—but it was after a long day of coding, so it was hard to keep the momentum.

I spent more than 30 minutes with JADX. I practiced reverse-engineering an APK and also learned how to get an app from the Play Store for this purpose.

📝 Reflection Note

This will probably be corrected by ChatGPT and formatted (since I’m not great at Markdown and English isn’t my first language). But I did my best, and that’s what matters.

Forem: Owen

Day 1: Everything has to start somewhere.