How can I create educational app for Android in less time?

It’s a great premise, but how will you get it to market? As you know, there’s a lot more to creating an app than just thinking of the idea.

So, what’s the first step? You’d like to create it yourself, but you don’t even know how to code. Is it even possible to design your own app if you lack the basics of coding?

Here’s the honest truth: it’s going to be hard, but you can definitely learn to code your mobile app in less than 30 days.

If you’re going to be successful, though, you’ll need to put in lots of work. You’ll need to dedicate time towards learning mobile app development every day in order to see real progress.

The time and energy you can devote to learning will pay for itself in the skills you learn. Like most things worth learning, the more you dedicate yourself, the faster your results will be.

But it isn’t just a race of working at blinding speed through a few textbooks you picked up at the library.

If you’re going to learn how to code your mobile app in just 30 days, you need to work smarter.

These are the exact strategies you’ll need to use to increase your retention, apply what you’ve learned, and start making progress towards building the app of your dreams.

Understand the final goal for your app

First and foremost, you need to know what you want to learn before you start coding.

Then you can use the right development tools to assist you.

I see a lot of people who say they want to “learn how to code,” but don’t know what their real goals are. You can spend your whole life learning new pieces of app development.

In truth, new features are being developed so fast, nobody will be able to keep up with it all the time.

And when you only have 30 days to learn how to code, you need to be really clear on what your goal is. Exactly what will your app do, and how will you get that process to work?

Start by learning about your target users. What will they be expecting in the app? What must you deliver?

Get a clear feel for what the app should offer at a bare minimum. Remove anything that doesn’t fulfill this requirement. You can always add it later.

For example, you might want users to be able to login to your app with Facebook, Twitter, and Google. But you don’t have to add that in the first version.

Instead, consider which one is the most important. Only learn how to do that, then you can build your skills once you release the first version of your app and see what needs to be improved.

Who knows? You might find that 99% of your users are on Facebook, and Twitter and Google login options are a waste of your time.

Once you understand the core functionality, you want to wireframe everything your app will do. Wireframing is the process where you create a basic layout of your app.

You want to understand what each button does. Write all this down to help you remember it later.

True, it’s not very fun to do all this planning, but it’s a lot easier now than once you’ve started coding your app. You want to understand exactly what you need to learn now, so there aren’t surprises down the road.

If you don’t put in the work during this step and really understand what’s necessary to build out the app, you’re going to learn the wrong things during your 30 days, or forget key elements.

When you sit down to code the app, you’ll find gaps in your knowledge, and it’ll put the project far behind schedule.

The wireframe should incorporate elements of the design, but make sure to understand the user flow. Ensure it makes sense. Lay out all the features in advance so you know what’s required.

Once you have the functionality down, you’re going to need to focus on what that looks like on the backen. What kind of architecture do you want to use?

You should consider a few different pieces to this. Will you be storing data on the user’s device, or in the cloud? Will you need to send push notifications?

Think also about how you want to connect your databases.

A ticket app might have a primary database of events with a simpler user database, while a social app would have a main database of users with secondary functionality for events.

Decide what your focus is going to be, and decide on this structure. You need to figure out the basic backend of your app as soon as possible, preferably in a sketch or illustration.

If you don’t know what that will look like yet, that’s okay. You may need to become more familiar with computer programming before you can choose the absolute best method.

But it’s best to have a working idea you change now, rather than a blank slate where you have to build everything from scratch later.

Up next, you need to choose the right language to learn. The primary language used for most Android development is Java.

It’s used in a number of other platforms as well, so this can be a good place to start if you’re looking to expand beyond apps one day.

However, if you’re going to want to design an app for the Apple iOS software, you’re going to need to learn Objective-C or Swift.

These are specifically designed for Apple software, and unfortunately aren’t very applicable elsewhere. The experience you get learning any language, however, will serve you well later.

Choosing the right language is important, because your skills will be worthless if you can’t program in the correct framework.

If you’re unsure, go with the platform you feel most comfortable with, whether that’s Android or iOS. You’ll have a head start working with an operating system you already know well.

Up next, you need to learn the basics before you can start with the meaty code that will take you closer to developing your app.

Start by learning the critical basics

Before you get started, you need to understand the basics.

Just like you need to learn how to chop vegetables and turn on the oven before going to cooking school, these building blocks aren’t difficult, but they’re mandatory for effective learning.

First, you need to learn how to set up your code to run. A lot of online programs that teach programming forget this step. They leave you with plenty of knowledge, but zero experience on actually making your app run.

Don’t fall into this trap. Instead, learn how to take your code and put it into an app that you can actually test.

Second, learn how to set up an environment that will let you work efficiently. You’ll need a place to type in your code and see it in action.

If you’re coding with Swift or Objective-C for iOS, you’ll want to look into Xcode.

Android developers will need to learn about Android Studio.

These are programs that give you the tools you need to actually design and publish apps, instead of just tinkering around with code.

Third, you need to learn version control. The most common version is Git, which is a free tool that saves revisions of your code.

When you make errors, you can restore an earlier version of your code to remove the bug.

If you’d like to take to the next level, learn how to use GitHub. You can think of GitHub like Dropbox for code.

You can store updated code, share it with teammates, and view revisions in the platform.

Source: How to Learn to Code The Mobile App You Want in Less Than 30 Days - BuildFire