Android Development

[Daimon]

To be fair, android development and testing is kind of a nightmare for beginners with all the current bugs and stuff
I was trying out a simple maps sample in android studio and couldn't figure out the reason why the app is crashing due to permission issue, even though it is explicitly stated.
fast forward a few hrs and an obscure blog post, i chanced upon the reason: a bug affecting all nexus emulators in the AVD.
Switching to another device allowed the app to run perfectly, well almost. Then the location services wouldn't work, no error, it just wouldn't do anything!
Fast forward an hour and i decided to take the leap of faith and test it on an actual phone. It worked flawlessly this time.

Imagine how many would have stopped trying at step 1.
I think platform stability is sort of a necessity for ppl to enjoy the initial baby steps.

/rant

Find a project/problem you care about. Learn whatever topics related to the problem. Anyone who is learning something new have to fight against Meno's paradox i.e. how can you inquire about something when you don't know what you don't know. You don't have to absorb everything the first time. But you need to learn the meanings of what you are doing. Later on things become clearer. But you have to continuously fighting ignorance like Socrates.

 

[natnai]

My starting point was philosophy. Then later on, I discover that studying two different things intensively bring you to a metalevel of understanding.

Actually a lot of people fail to understand that philosophy is not just nonsense. I have always been a student of philosophy, although these days I have not had the time to indulge.

But if you study it intensively enough, one discovers that philosophy, especially metaphysics, is like the logic of logic...

Sent from Xiaomi MI NOTE LTE using GAGT

 

[KnightNiwrem]

Actually a lot of people fail to understand that philosophy is not just nonsense. I have always been a student of philosophy, although these days I have not had the time to indulge.

But if you study it intensively enough, one discovers that philosophy, especially metaphysics, is like the logic of logic...

Sent from Xiaomi MI NOTE LTE using GAGT

Philosophy is good.

But Bonadaly...

 

[natnai]

Philosophy is good.

But Bonadaly...

Bonadaly has the classic philosopher's disease. They think about everything but do nothing.

 

[Daimon]

Philosophy is good.

But Bonadaly...

What do you mean by Philosophy is good?

 

[Daimon]

Bonadaly has the classic philosopher's disease. They think about everything but do nothing.

It's a mistaken view. Descartes is the inventor of Cartesian geometry which many people use it for "doing" many things including algorithm analysis. This distinction between thinking and doing is not describing our experiences well.

 

[Daimon]

By thinking, you are traversing up the tree of consciousness to higher levels of meaning. I speculate that the height of the tree is infinite.

O(infinity)

If you are learning two unrelated things at once, your order of growth of understanding is O(n^2)

If you keep specialise on only one thing and don't learn about other things, your order of growth is about O(logN)

If you want to understand what I am saying, you need not just Computer Science knowledge, but also philosophical understanding. I used some concepts that I learned from Sedgewick to structure my philosophical thoughts so that people can see meaning to it.

 

[KnightNiwrem]

What do you mean by Philosophy is good?

I mean it in its simplest form - fun, stimulating, I like.

By thinking, you are traversing up the tree of consciousness to higher levels of meaning. I speculate that the height of the tree is infinite.

O(infinity)

If you are learning two unrelated things at once, your order of growth of understanding is O(n^2)

If you keep specialise on only one thing and don't learn about other things, your order of growth is about O(logN)

If you want to understand what I am saying, you need not just Computer Science knowledge, but also philosophical understanding. I used some concepts that I learned from Sedgewick to structure my philosophical thoughts so that people can see meaning to it.

Wait. We have a tree of consciousness now?

Are you sure you are not just butchering the asymptotic notations?

 

[natnai]

By thinking, you are traversing up the tree of consciousness to higher levels of meaning. I speculate that the height of the tree is infinite.

O(infinity)

If you are learning two unrelated things at once, your order of growth of understanding is O(n^2)

If you keep specialise on only one thing and don't learn about other things, your order of growth is about O(logN)

If you want to understand what I am saying, you need not just Computer Science knowledge, but also philosophical understanding. I used some concepts that I learned from Sedgewick to structure my philosophical thoughts so that people can see meaning to it.

Sorry but this is the absolute worst use of O notation I have ever seen.

 

[natnai]

It's a mistaken view. Descartes is the inventor of Cartesian geometry which many people use it for "doing" many things including algorithm analysis. This distinction between thinking and doing is not describing our experiences well.

Descartes contributed greatly to the field of mathematics. But so far I have not seen anything from you. It's time for you to do something. Writing System.out.println("Hello world!"); would be a great start.

 

[natnai]

Alternatively, if like dwelling in the realm of meta-thinking, you can start with discrete mathematics. Induction is a very interesting subject. Show your first proof and I will concede that you are actually doing something productive.

 

[davidktw]

Sorry but this is the absolute worst use of O notation I have ever seen.

So nice of you, I call those bullshxt

 

[natnai]

So nice of you, I call those bullshxt

Maybe Bonadaly will actually write a program at some point in the distant future. Maybe...

We must encourage him to do something. He needs a push

 

[natnai]

Btw coming from 100% dynamically-typed languages into Java, I just want to say that generics are the best thing since sliced bread and every language should have them.

 

[KnightNiwrem]

Btw coming from 100% dynamically-typed languages into Java, I just want to say that generics are the best thing since sliced bread and every language should have them.

At least until you start having nested generic types that might extend/implement some other interface/class.

Then you would love dynamically typed languages again.

 

[davidktw]

Btw coming from 100% dynamically-typed languages into Java, I just want to say that generics are the best thing since sliced bread and every language should have them.

When you start hitting issues with them, you wouldn't feel the same There are some caveats with generics especially on covariant and invariant issue.

 

[natnai]

At least until you start having nested generic types that might extend/implement some other interface/class.

Then you would love dynamically typed languages again.

When you start hitting issues with them, you wouldn't feel the same There are some caveats with generics especially on covariant and invariant issue.

Don't make me sad

I have been so happy using generics in my code

 

[davidktw]

Don't make me sad

I have been so happy using generics in my code

No sadness required. Java may be common in the industry, but it is not without it's complexities and woes. Just like any other programming languages, it has its fair share of quirks and burdens. One of them is the type strictness and verbosity. Generics may help with the verbosity but added another layer of complexity to deal with the typing requirement. So does annotation, making it for younger developers having more dependency on IDE to help them organise properly. So for those like me who isn't inclined to IDE but rather featured text editor, sometimes it's harder.

That being said, it's does have a lot of features that have existed for years but very seldom people touches, such as RMI, Proxies, AOP, code weaving and so forth. Frankly much projects don't even need to go into that level, so there are a lot of gems in Java that are strange to a lot of developers.

Take some time and dig them out

When used properly, Java is a powerful language with a lot of performance. In moderately large project or so, Java is not significantly slower than C++, but offers a lot safer programming environment with large number of 3rd party libraries such as from Apache Software Foundation.

 

[natnai]

No sadness required. Java may be common in the industry, but it is not without it's complexities and woes. Just like any other programming languages, it has its fair share of quirks and burdens. One of them is the type strictness and verbosity. Generics may help with the verbosity but added another layer of complexity to deal with the typing requirement. So does annotation, making it for younger developers having more dependency on IDE to help them organise properly. So for those like me who isn't inclined to IDE but rather featured text editor, sometimes it's harder.

That being said, it's does have a lot of features that have existed for years but very seldom people touches, such as RMI, Proxies, AOP, code weaving and so forth. Frankly much projects don't even need to go into that level, so there are a lot of gems in Java that are strange to a lot of developers.

Take some time and dig them out

When used properly, Java is a powerful language with a lot of performance. In moderately large project or so, Java is not significantly slower than C++, but offers a lot safer programming environment with large number of 3rd party libraries such as from Apache Software Foundation.

I'm liking it a lot so far. It feels a lot more robust than the other languages I work with frequently (JS, PHP). The only complaint I guess I would have is how verbose it all is. It really is _very_ verbose, and you have to keep instantiating different implementations of interfaces even for simple data structures, and then you have to call a method. That being said class-based OOP is quite intuitive for me, more so than the JS inheritance model. That's really a bit disorganised in comparison imo.

Oh and also the JVM runs other languages I'm interested in, like Scala and Clojure.

 

[davidktw]

I'm liking it a lot so far. It feels a lot more robust than the other languages I work with frequently (JS, PHP). The only complaint I guess I would have is how verbose it all is. It really is _very_ verbose, and you have to keep instantiating different implementations of interfaces even for simple data structures, and then you have to call a method. That being said class-based OOP is quite intuitive for me, more so than the JS inheritance model. That's really a bit disorganised in comparison imo.

Interfaces is what brings a lot of dynamism into the language. Much of the flexibility in a strictly typed class system is using the basic inheritance model. Without it, the language is pretty much as static as it seems on the code level. The indirectness offered by the inheritance model is the abstraction and vagueness to encourage logic encapsulation between modules in the ecosystem.

Java alone didn't really fill the space with complexities, I must say frameworks like Spring really _helped_ to add on the complexities with tons of XML, Annotation and properties files