Or does anyone wanna buddy up and learn it with me?

I lost my job as a Java dev after a little less than 2 years and figured is play around with Kotlin for Android development.

Working on setting up unemployment and startinf the whole job hunt thing again for the umpteenth time in my life but will have a lot of free time in the interim so I wanna start working on an app idea for calculating dice weight for ttrpgs. I’ve been looking at Kotlin over the last few months and decided sure why not.

The plan is to get the fundamentals down and make 1 or 2 small projects and see where I am at. After that I’m considering chekcing out Rust as well. But that won’t probably be until next year.

Kotlin doesn’t have nearly as much of a community as Rust so this is probably a shit in the dark. But I guess but me up if you are interested. I’ve never done a buddy system with a language but with my attention issues it might help?

  • monobot
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    2 years ago

    Kotlin doesn’t have nearly as much of a community as Rust

    Yeah, because it doesn’t need it, it is easy to get started. And I guess kotlin devs are busy making money.

    Joking a litle bit, but it is true. I expect there is much more work for kotlin than rust devs, especially with less experience.

    Go for it, make some small projects, extend some of existing open source ones.

    I was mostly working with php and python and taking ul kotlin was easy. I have few small apps I made for myself.

    So my suggestion is just jump into it, learn as you go.

    • roux [he,they]OP
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      2 years ago

      This is encouraging, thanks. I admit I first started looking into Kotlin because on the surface it “looked” a bit like Python, but after working a bit with it this morning I don’t think that is the case. I have at least one app that I want to make for my dnd friends(the dice average/weight calculator) but nothing really lined up after that. I would like to make a chat/messenger app with encryption and rooms that automatically delete after a certain time. And playing with stuff like Briar’s Bluetooth mesh capability would be interesting. So I guess that is 2 apps I could toss up on github. Another thing I want to focus on is dusting off my github so I have actual projects to show to potential employers.

  • Muad'DibberA
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    2 years ago

    Get a good idea for an app you’d like to make, then learn android jetpack compose. Then you’ll learn kotlin, and have a cool app to show off to ppl.

  • ∞🏳️‍⚧️Edie [it/its]
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    2 years ago

    I’ve been interested in learning Kotlin for Android dev too. I did start but didn’t get very far. If you want to, I’d be up to try something, maybe it would also help me with my attention issues.

    • roux [he,they]OP
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      2 years ago

      I am about halfway through the codelab stuff right now and hope to burn through the rest here in the next day. I’m planning on revisiting compact functions because I think they are interesting but a bit confusing and I want to demystify them before moving on.

      After that I wanna go through the Udacity courses and hopefully solidify the fundamentals. The Android dev Udacity course is like 30-40 hours or something but it shouldn’t be awful.

      We could figure something out if that all works for you. Not sure how to go about it since this is new and I don’t normally put myself out there like this.

      • ∞🏳️‍⚧️Edie [it/its]
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        2 years ago

        Sounds about fine. I’m off on a trip in burgerland, so I’m not sure if I’ll be doing anything. But I’ll try and power through the codelab stuff once I get back home Tuesday.

  • bobs_guns
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    2 years ago

    I’ve been wanting to pick up kotlin recently… it seems like I may be able to start my new job soon though, so I’m going to have too much on my plate between that and working on Godot.

    • roux [he,they]OP
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      2 years ago

      What all do you got going with regards to game dev? I’ve also been somewhat interested in stuff like Godot(since it’s foss) but haven’t really pot too much serious effort into learning it all.

        • roux [he,they]OP
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          2 years ago

          Ha no need to apologize. I totes get it. I was eyeballing Godot in the past because their inhouse language is derived from python. My formal education was C# focused, and my professional experience is Java. So Unity and Unreal isn’t too far out of the realm of possibilities. My real issue is that I’m not creative enough I think to make games. I might see about making a basic 2D platformer maybe in the future.

            • roux [he,they]OP
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              2 years ago

              Tbf, C# and Java are pretty similar so if you are getting a grasp on Java, it shouldn’t be that big of a gap to pick up C#. And C++ is the bigger game dev lang anyway from what I’ve seen. I think sticking with C++ and Unity/Unreal would go a long way.

              My last job was feed automation software for feedyards. Almost the entire stack was Java with Primefaces for web stuff and occasional JS for some smaller stuff.

              For game dev, I’m already a fan of 2D platformers so a knockoff Mario type game or maybe a small Metroidvania would probably be where I would go and Godot can handle that pretty easily. Although their 3D stuff is starting to look really good.

                • roux [he,they]OP
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                  2 years ago

                  Yeah basically we made software for factory farms.

                  And I thought that a lot of game dev is C++ but maybe I was incorrect in that assumption. Havent looked in a while.