Lex Tutorial

A good Lex tutorial for beginners

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54bo1qaHAfk

New Stuff in SSD

Most of you might have heard about SSD (Solid State Drive). It's kind of been here for about 2-3 years now. I got to know about it only about a year ago though.

Here's a Pocket SSD in the market! But costly enough !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7is4jVl49eo

And do you know how SSDs work ? Get to ! While reading some Quora answer recently, I read that SSDs are based on "electronic" technology rather than mechanical tech in the case of Hard Disk Drives(HDDs). It seems SSD is based on NAND Flash Memory or DRAM or others, as mentioned in

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive

It's like the next gen stuff, which will completely replace HDDs, considering it's speed, and it consumes less power compared to HDDs. You could check more about it if this amazes you!

Android First & Second Exercise : Take Form Input and show Output

The first exercise is about getting form input. Input for details like Name, Age etc and the second exercise asks for DOB to be input in a new Dialog box ( for which I used a small deprecated code - showDialog() function ) and also show all the inputs taken from user, in a new Screen (Activity) on the click of "Submit" button and also, the user can clear details on form input screen by clicking "Reset" button.

I have attached the code for the exercise, straight away.

Here it is.

Just extract the code to get a folder, with all the files. Now import this project into Android Studio after closing your current project (by File -> Close Project). While importing, Studio will tell that it's going to change the sdk location to a new one ( because files will have my computer's sdk location ), just click Ok for it and the project should be imported.

I created the above project in Linux Studio. And I m not sure if this will import properly in Windows Systems. I tried importing my Lab folder ( Linux Studio's Folder ) in my Windows System - but I had some problems. Didn't have time to check what the problem was, but it was kinda complicated. Just try importing for now. If it doesn't work out for you too, please ping me asap. I will check on it. I guess I will check about it, before people start pinging me.

And about the code. It's not that easy to understand the code unless you have already read some stuff about Android - layouts and code. Get a friend who knows to code some basics in Android. I m sure you will have some friend. If you don't, use some good tutorial sites and the official site - developer.android.com/develop/index.html

The official site has mentioned (at the end of the this page) some of it's famous video courses available in other sites, but taught by the Android experts from Google.

Other good sites to learn are

www.androidhive.info
http://code.tutsplus.com/categories/android-sdk
www.stackoverflow.com - To debug all your crazy errors! :D

and the list goes on. You can find a few more in DuckDuckGo search engine by Ducking it ( or just Google it as usual ).

Android App Development Tutorials

This set of 200 videos, is considered one of the best tutorials for Android, for beginners : 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2F07DBCDCC01493A

Of course, you don't have to see all the 200 videos. About 30 - 40 videos should give you a good idea about what to do and how things are done and about what to search for in Google when you are having problems or have new ideas.

And if you have already installed Android Studio, just start from the fourth video, because the first three are about installation. And actually, the above mentioned videos use Eclipse. There will be small differences. And the videos are old, so, there will be some old stuff. Like, there is some Gradle concept in Android Studio, unlike Eclipse, used in the videos. And then, the stuff that are there in a Blank Activity in Eclipse is different from that of the Android Studio latest version based Blank Activity Project. And sometimes, the layout designs are slightly complicated too.

I really don't recommend you to learn such complicated stuff at the start itself. I usually ask people to always use Eclipse first. But, unfortunately, it is not available as a bundle in the official site. Only Android Studio is available, so, I can't help it. But if you want, you can get it from me and try, for a good start and then move to Android Studio later.

For any queries, just mail me. I will try to clarify it if possible. Or I will use my favorite site - www.stackoverflow.com, which you could use too !

New Trends in AI

I recently read this article about a research in Artificial Intelligence, about how an algorithm makes computers "learn" stuff like humans. Just some inspiring new trends and research in AI, to boost up your thoughts about it.

http://www.gizmag.com/artificial-intelligence-algorithm-learning/41448/

Installing Android Studio

Installing and using Android Studio is pretty straight forward in WIndows. It is almost straight forward in Linux too. Just that, in Windows, you click the Application icon to run the Android Studio program, but in Linux, you have to run a .sh (shell) script in the terminal to run the program.

Note before starting : You need JDK installed in your system before installing Android Studio.

Downloading Step

This step is very easy. Just go here

Download Android Studio

And under "All Android Studio Packages", 

• For Windows, choose the recommended marked exe link.
• For Mac OS X and Linux, there is only one link, just choose it accordingly.

Installation Step

Now for Windows the exe will do all the installation. And the program icon will appear in the Desktop. For Mac OS X, it's the same I believe. I m not sure though.

For Linux, here is a tutorial for Ubuntu systems. Similar stuff can be done in other Linux distributions too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfinKxwYYZs

For any problems please comment or mail me :)