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Guidance needed to good tool like a diy for quick app development

A

Arunesh Dutta

Lurker

Hello all wanted guidance on best tool like a DIY(Do it yourself) as had read in magazine, for quick and easy android app development which supports API integration..Thx
 
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What do you mean by "API integration"? What's providing the API?
 
Arunesh Dutta said:
easy meant diy (do it yourself) and sure you'll know as there are like you start by template already there and place blocks needed by dragging modifying the title etc wherever needed
Click to expand...

If you do a Google search for "Android app builder" it turns up a lot of app builder services. Is that what you were looking for?
But this kind of templating approach tends to work only for the simplest applications. In my experience it doesn't really scale up that well, because sooner or later, you need to start doing something which is way off the track of the template, and builder tools. And also, when problems start to happen, you need to be able to investigate and debug your code. This is best served by learning what's going on at a deep level. If you're relying on auto-generated code, then you'll never understand how it works. If you want to have a good understanding of app development, then you're best served by learning the nuts and bolts from the ground up.

People have tried to make writing code like building a lego model - just assemble chunks of building blocks, and hey presto - a working, usable application. Or "zero code" systems which aim to auto-generate code from a specification. In all cases I've found these systems lacking in many respects, or suitable for only very simple applications. When it comes down to it, creating software applications is still a very manual, and time consuming process. And it's not just about code, but I won't get into that here.
Besides, writing code is the fun stuff, to me anyway. Why would you want to dumb that down and de-skill it? ;)

Having said all that, it depends what you're trying to do really. It might suit the nature of your app, or you may have something which is aligned with the app builder system.
 
LV426 said:
If you do a Google search for "Android app builder" it turns up a lot of app builder services. Is that what you were looking for?
But this kind of templating approach tends to work only for the simplest applications. In my experience it doesn't really scale up that well, because sooner or later, you need to start doing something which is way off the track of the template, and builder tools. And also, when problems start to happen, you need to be able to investigate and debug your code. This is best served by learning what's going on at a deep level. If you're relying on auto-generated code, then you'll never understand how it works. If you want to have a good understanding of app development, then you're best served by learning the nuts and bolts from the ground up.

People have tried to make writing code like building a lego model - just assemble chunks of building blocks, and hey presto - a working, usable application. Or "zero code" systems which aim to auto-generate code from a specification. In all cases I've found these systems lacking in many respects, or suitable for only very simple applications. When it comes down to it, creating software applications is still a very manual, and time consuming process. And it's not just about code, but I won't get into that here.
Besides, writing code is the fun stuff, to me anyway. Why would you want to dumb that down and de-skill it? ;)

Having said all that, it depends what you're trying to do really. It might suit the nature of your app, or you may have something which is aligned with the app builder system.
Click to expand...

I too agree with your thoughts and thought of using react but there might be learning needed which might delay the app development or let me know if its fine with react or other
 
I've not used React, but on first glance, it looks like a cross-platform Javascript based development system, which can produce a native Android application.
Again, it's trying to simplify the dev process, and to me it's along the same lines as Angular - yes it's giving you a lot of functionality out-of-the-box, which you don't need to implement. But honestly, these systems do take time to learn. They are doing a lot for you under the covers, and I question the value really, because it's taking you another step away from the native development. Don't get me wrong, these type of systems are very clever, but the learning curve is still quite steep.
So if your intention is to create a cross-platform application, which can run on Android, or iOS, then React could be just what you're looking for.
As I say, never used React before so can't really offer a great insight, but the 'hello world' example looks promising

https://kylewbanks.com/blog/react-native-tutorial-part-1-hello-react. But it's a basic calculator. See what I mean - all these examples are very simple apps. What happens if you want a complex app with stuff like nav drawer, recycler views, remote web service invocation?

Actually, that code looks like Typescript. Now that is worth learning, because it's a vast improvement over Javascript.
 
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