How it was? Or my first project

Saying

A little about how I got into programming. By education I am a teacher-psychologist, and for 5 years I have been quite successfully practicing this profession. But, due to various reasons, I am increasingly thinking about moving to another country. And since in other countries the language and mentality are different, I would not have been able to become a professional in the same field without serious retraining. So I started looking for easier and more interesting ways to move and be successful. At first I tried myself in a tattoo (it practically does not require knowledge of the language), but that's a completely different story. Then my colleague friend introduced me to CodeGym. At first, I was skeptical about the promises to make me a full-fledged programmer in a game form and at such a modest price. But then the money from the birthday (not subject to "family tax"), the choice between WOW and CodeGym ... In general, thanks to the timely discount, the scales turned in the right direction, and here I am. As we all should know by now, 90% Javarash is pure practice. You learn to solve problems, you learn to search for missing knowledge on the Internet. All this is good, but the feeling that something is missing to complete the picture did not let me go for 15 levels. I was thinking about joining geekbrains, but (probably luckily) the same friend stopped me in time and introduced me to udemy. Having opened this storehouse of knowledge, I went on about persuasion like: “Ps, friend, are you a newbie? There is a discount for you…only 3 days, don't miss your chance! ". Later it turned out that there are constantly discounts, but not the point. I immediately bought a set of two courses: Java from 0 to Pro and Android, similar. This is where our story begins.

Success or not?

While taking an Android course, I got homework to make a project based on what I learned. I am such a person that doing something simple or typical is the same as not doing it. So I started making life difficult for myself right away. I turned to the man with the most developed and lively imagination of all whom I know. This is my beloved wife (yes, she will also read this article). She proposed to make an application in which there will be pictures of animals, by clicking on which, the voice of these animals will be played. It was a great idea, but still quite simple. Based on the proposal received, I began to reason:

• It is necessary that this application was not just "Zilch!" (laughed and forgot), but left something behind. For example, teaching something.
• Let it be the alphabet with animals. But not just the alphabet, but English!
• And not just animals, but those that few people know, so that the horizons also expand!
• And there should also be animation, sounding of the letter and the name of the animal in English and Russian!

This is how I understand the task (I forgot to say that before Javarash I was practically unfamiliar with programming. And from the moment of active use of this site until the start of the project, less than 3-4 months passed. Therefore, if you are matrons in this matter and think “Pf ... what something changed from the original version? ”, I assure you - yes, it has changed)! The first difficulty I encountered So I started with the abstract class "Letter". First, homework could not be posted in the course. I did the job, spent a lot of energy to show off and could not do it. Second, the app I wrote was fully functional on the emulator and on my phone. Of the planned items, I did not make an animation, because. I spat and decided that I would finish it when I went through the relevant lessons in the course. But when I thought about distributing the application, I ran into an interesting problem. Deciding to check on another phone and tablet if my application is optimized for different screens and versions of android, I encountered an unknown error. The program simply terminated its work when moving to a letter. I tried to find the root of the problem, got acquainted with the logs, which, compared to clear Java exceptions, seemed even more abra-kadabra. The Internet did not help me. On the one hand, I made a working application that my children like to play on, on the other hand, it only works on my phone. I think it's funny. Of course, I was upset, but on reflection, I concluded that I got more than I lost:

• I improved my ability to deal with criticism of my work.
• Realized the value of knowledge and design experience.
• Increased my self-esteem in the field of programming.
• Realized the need to study programming patterns and the basics of refactoring.
• And of course, now I have my own application, which no one else has and most likely will not. =)

"I know that I know nothing". By carrying out such training projects, you can analyze your knowledge and gaps in it well, as well as outline ways for further development. Is it worth it to study programming further if you understand that all the efforts made over a fairly long stage of your life have moved you from 0, perhaps to +0.001? For myself, I answered yes. And you?