Google Launches Android Programming Course For Absolute Beginners (zdnet.com) 98
If you're on the fence on whether or not should you spring for learning how to code, Google is willing to offer a helping hand. The company has partnered with Udacity to offer a "nanodegree" class designed for people with no programming experience at all. The program costs $199 per month. ZDNet reports:The course material, developed by Google, is hosted on learning platform Udacity and builds on earlier programs such as the Android Nanodegree for Beginners. The basics course takes around four weeks if the student commits six hours a week and upon completion they'll have created two basic apps built in Android Studio."Google, in partnership with Udacity, is making Android development accessible and understandable to everyone, so that regardless of your background, you can learn to build apps that improve the lives of people around you," Google announced on its developer blog.
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No, TFA isn't even buzzword compliant.
Re: nano-degree class ? (Score:3)
Why the fuck do people on a tech website seem to be utterly unable to use Google.
Re: nano-degree class ? (Score:1)
You're the one with the personal hygiene problem. I can smell you from here.
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Why the fuck do people on a tech website have absolutely no sense of humor?
Oh yeah, that's right.
They do. But you're too lazy to tell us that it was meant to be humorous. Next time, try a wink, an emoticon, or a damn old-school (grin). Since you're new to the Internet, let me help you with a simple concept: communication via text cannot display tone or body language, so it is difficult to recognize sarcasm or humor without some kind of help, which is what smilies and emoticons were designed for.
And why the fuck do people on a tech website refuse to log in? I'm talking to you, AC. And no, that wasn't
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Speaking of Google, you might want to use it and search for "finding a sense of humor."
finding-- [Re: nano-degree class ?] (Score:3)
Speaking of Google, you might want to use it and search for "finding a sense of humor."
I typed "finding" in to google, and it autocompleted finding dory, finding nemo, finding neverland, finding carter, and finding bigfoot.
I'm to lazy to finish typing "..a sense of humor." If google won't autocomplete it for me, I figure I don't need to know anyway.
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Looks like they hooked up the Slashdot "Firehose" directly to the Google marketing department.
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"a nano-degree class"
This course is actually designed to produce the managers of tomorrow.
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"a nano-degree class"
This course is actually designed to produce the managers of tomorrow.
In the future, rather than one big manager, everybody will have billions of nanomanagers.
Re: nano-degree class ? (Score:1)
Why would I pay $200 a month for 0.000000001 of a degree? That doesn't seem like a good deal.
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Why would I pay $200 a month for 0.000000001 of a degree? That doesn't seem like a good deal.
it's global warming!
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Great, so now all we have to do is learn C++. Should be pretty easy.
Re:What is the point? (Score:5, Funny)
Writing C/C++ is easy.
Reading C/C++ after it has been written is hard.
Writing secure C/C++ is very hard.
Reading someone else's C/C++ is nearly impossible, therefore you can copy-pasta it assuming it is secure.
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Yup. There are so many different styles in C++ that they amount to different dialects or even different domain specific languages. Unless you understand the underpinnings you don't know what's going on so you just copypasta. That's why I really prefer C, but you have to know what you're doing.
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I'm reminded of:
[Unix process talks to its parent process]
A: I'm bored
B: Hi bored, I'm dad
A: I'm \0
B: Hi
A: I'm AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
B: Hi A*segfaults*
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Great, so now all we have to do is learn C++. Should be pretty easy.
It was- at least for us C prgrammers.
Back in the early 90s when I first took up C++ (and it became a resume 'must'), it was nothing. Lot's of great things to make programing easier and more productive.
Great.
I haven't touched C++ code in almost 20 years and it makes almost no sense now.
And people think that's good?
Folks make fun of COBOL, but let me tell you something, it survives because it is good.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, get off my lawn ...
But really, Computer Science has stagnated.
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After about 8 weeks of total combined android development under the belt... yeah, Android kinda sucks. It just feels weird. It's both too low-level AND too abstracted. It is very class hierarchy-bound, in an ugly way. It forces an app life cycle that is alien to me.
The navigation and data flow between activities and their state is not very obvious. Nothing is obvious. Naming is strange. Using bundles for communicating data between parts of the app is too difficult beyond primitive data types and strings, so
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By that logic all of the people who fell for "Trump University" are now billionaires.
There's a difference between investing in yourself and investing in a "get rich quick" scheme. Unfortunately, most people don't know the difference and want a ready made solution that requires absolutely no effort on their part.
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There still might be the impression, amongst the people this training is targeting, that you can still strike it rich building apps... that Google is banking on.
True. Google doesn't have the rich ecosystem that Apple has, where Stanford MBA graduates are writing business plans for that killer app that will turn them into instant venture capitalists.
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By that logic all of the people who fell for "Trump University" are now billionaires.
well trump is. he says.
the question is where in the curriculum do you learn about zero sum games.
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My cousin works from home and earns $4500 a week.
Investing in a "get rich quick" scheme is not the same as investing yourself.
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The bigger question is are you willing to invest in yourself? Paying $199 per month might be worth it. Most people who seek free learning materials on the Internet lack commitment because they don't have any money on the line.
take the $199 and set up a Roth IRA by buying an index fund. then go out and get a job.
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take the $199 and set up a Roth IRA by buying an index fund. then go out and get a job.
You can only contribute to a Roth IRA from earned income of a job. No job, no contribution. Spending $199 on a new suit for job interviews is better advice.
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take the $199 and set up a Roth IRA by buying an index fund. then go out and get a job.
You can only contribute to a Roth IRA from earned income of a job. No job, no contribution. Spending $199 on a new suit for job interviews is better advice.
huh. gotta admit i didn't know that.
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I can confirm that the official guides/tutorials are a complete fucking mess.
Their IDE is bloated and unwieldy.
The emulator is slower than a one-legged cricket in January.
"Hello World" app (Score:1)
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Programming is not the important thing (Score:4, Insightful)
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Mobile apps with HTML, CSS & JS
Target multiple platforms with one code base
Free and open source
Money (Score:5, Insightful)
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except the classes are also available for free.
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Boring, clueless, nearly irrelevant and stuffed full of cash, Google has become the new Microsoft. Once seen as a 'cool' and 'hip' place to work by many, the evil has set in, the stupid is strong, and it has become painfully clear that the Google is the new Microsoft: doomed to hilarious attempts to create/acquire new tech by throwing wads of cash randomly and hoping something sticks to it. Yes, Google, the innovator: home of the wonderful AdSense, purveyors of quality thermostats, self-driving cars RealSoonNow (tm) (because I always wanted to buy me some top-shelp navigation software from an ad agency), and of course those really neat glasses and a plethora of spiffy here-today-gone-tomorrow web-apps. Not just innovation, but innovation at WEB SCALE.
google's fine once you realize that everything they produce is always in beta.
Quit trying to teach non-programmers to program (Score:1)
Just quit. They don't get it. I was trying to explain loops and variables in a small scripting language to a girl at work who "knows" C#. She acted like I was talking about splitting the atom. She went back to her desk to "review" what I had explained so she could "get it".
If the girl who "knows" C# can't get a simple scripting language, good luck with average folks. It doesn't work teaching non-programmers to program. Just stop.
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I've programmed in assembler, and I have trouble understanding anything written in scripting languages. I think it's because by the time I've got to end.of.ridiculouslyKZF_long.identifier.poettering.factory.subobject.valInt223a I've forgotten what day it is, never mind what the beginning of it was or what problem I'm trying to solve.
gold mine (Score:1)
1. Spend $2000 making super simple "beginner" course materials that look real snazzy
2. Charge 100,000+ rubes $199/mo for the privelege of looking at it
3. Laugh all the way to the bank
app permissions (Score:2)
Knowing google the resulting tutorial will result in:
"Would you like to install the following app: 'Hello World' "
The app will require the following permissions:
contacts
messages
Read call state
microphone
video camera
storage - all files and folders
But seriously their tutorial ought to at least touch on security - ie don't mess with it if you don't understand/need it. ...
That doesn't sound competitive (Score:4, Interesting)
An industry-specific intro, and $199/mo? You could take intro CS at a community college, pay about the same if it's a 3 month course [nvcc.edu], and get actual credits towards a degree--a few centidegrees if you will, as opposed to a nanodegree. Community college is orders of magnitude better!
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I was pretty excited to see this, for my homeschooler, but, yeah, wow, $199 per month is more than I can swing for our homeschool budget. In States where the money follows the child, this would work out fine, but here we still have to pay the school tax but get none of it in rebate.
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but here we still have to pay the school tax but get none of it in rebate.
That's probably because your state is run by Democrats and their teacher union allies hate home schooling. So like most government programs they take your money and give you nothing, especially if you're (a) white and (b) middle class. Isn't socialism wonderful?
So you're saying the education system has definitely failed you.
Android Studio not for beginners (Score:3)
For various reasons, it was decided that all engineering students had to learn mobile app development in their first year of the degree. Every single person in the faculty who had any experience with Android told them it was a terrible idea.
They ultimately ended up getting them to write web apps instead; Javascript web programming is horrible but you can at least have a relatively gentle introduction to programming in it.
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Because you can earn a prestigious nano-degree!
quite the resume builder.
designed for people with no programming experience (Score:2)
$199 (Score:1)