I started working on the backend my Android app today. It’s been slow going because I haven’t done a whole lot of coding since last semester. I’m using Eclipse for the first time, which is a little weird. I’m just not used to using an IDE. I’ve been getting used to VIM for the past year and I’m not sure if I like Eclipse better or not. On one hand, having auto-complete options for method calls is kind of nifty, but I find that I can just code more, faster in VIM. I’m sure I’ll get faster with Eclipse the more I use it, but right now it is a little frustrating. IDE’s are always a few seconds behind on updating their red error squiggles and I hate waiting that extra time for Eclipse to make sure my syntax is correct when I know that it is.

It feels good to get back into designing applications. So far this semester I haven’t really been coding or designing at all. It’s all just been low level transistor stuff and databases. I loved doing design patterns last semester though. Figuring out how to fit classes together into a working application is something I could maybe see myself doing for a career. This project isn’t very big, just three classes and one interface at the moment, but I do like thinking about it again. Hopefully I’ll have some of the GUI up soon and I can post some screen shots of what I’m doing, but I have no idea how to do any of that yet so I have to learn it all first. If you know of any good tutorials or articles on Android app development feel free to link them in the comments.