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Dmitry Mina was originally a web developer who completed Developing Android Apps: Android Fundamentals. He’s made great strides since then. He was successfully able to transition from web development to Android development in his current job, and was also asked to present his story at Google I/O in Kiev. Congrats, Dmitry!
As for Dmitry’s experience in Android Fundamentals? He felt the course allowed him to pull together various pieces of Android developer knowledge to help him learn to build a relevant app.
The app Dmitry developed is called “Is Air Clean” and uses the API Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA), which contains information about the carbon emissions of over 60,000 power plants and 20,000 power companies worldwide. CARMA provides awareness to carbon emissions all across the world with the understanding that the problem is not getting better.
But don’t take our word for it. Here’s what Dmitry has to say about Android Fundamentals, his project and online learning in general.
I really didn’t have a fundamental vision of how Android works, so I enrolled in Udacity’s Android Fundamentals course to give me everything I was missing to become an Android developer. Ultimately, it allowed me to switch from web development to Android development in my current job.
At first, I was intimidated by Android development because I felt that I didn’t have enough experience for the Android track. But after the first few lessons, I got comfortable and started to grasp all the topics. Regardless of your background, I think aside from learning some Java, anyone with development experience can handle it.
I came up with the idea for my app from watching the Carl Sagan TV series Cosmos where they talk in-depth about carbon emissions. It seemed like a really fun and helpful idea to create an application that helps visualize emissions data.
My goal was to have a fundamental knowledge of Android to implement a feature, for example, and to know how to make it work. That was my main objective.
I came up with the idea for my app from watching the Carl Sagan TV series Cosmos which talks in-depth about carbon emissions. It seemed like a really fun and helpful idea to create an application that helps visualize emissions data. It’s a location-based Android app that displays the data of carbon emissions from the area you’re currently in, showing how much pollution is being produced. It provides a percentage breakdown of the type of energy produced in the area: hydro, fossil, nuclear or renewable energy. It also includes a prediction a year into the future for where that specific location will be as far as emissions and energy sources.
I enrolled in Udacity’s Android Fundamentals course to give me everything I was missing to become an Android developer.
I would recommend to anyone interested in Android to stay the course, even if it gets difficult. With programming, anything that comes to your mind can ultimately come to fruition. You have to just figure out how to complete the task in the best way.
With Android Fundamentals, the experience of the final project really stood out. It takes you from online to your home and allows you to get a more hands-on experience outside of the course forum. And you can definitely tap into other students for help.
I believe programming is such a big part of the future and we’re doing something that can help people all over the world.
Study Jams have been very helpful for me, as well. Bringing together the online and offline is a great experience, but even if you work solely online, there are a lot of people at Udacity and in the community that can help you out with the course.
I believe programming is such a big part of the future and we’re doing something that can help people all over the world. It gives us the chance to work globally and potentially change the future with great projects and products.
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