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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    11 months 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.

    • ghostOfRoux();OP
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      11 months 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.

  • 🏳️‍⚧️Edward [it/its]
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    11 months 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.

    • ghostOfRoux();OP
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      11 months 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.

      • 🏳️‍⚧️Edward [it/its]
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        11 months 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.

  • Muad'DibberA
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    11 months 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.

  • alunyanneгs 🏳️‍⚧️♀️
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    11 months ago

    i actually also thought of learning kotlin lel (though with a lesser priority since my main focus is soft+gamedev)

    it sucks that i currently have semester finals, otherwise i probably could’ve offered a hand.

    • ghostOfRoux();OP
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      11 months 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.

      • alunyanneгs 🏳️‍⚧️♀️
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        11 months ago

        well, in terms of gamedev, i’m currently learning C#, since it’s the common language between unity, unreal and godot. i’d love to use godot because it’s both free (as you’ve said) and feels much more simpler than unreal/unity… but at the same time, i feel like learning unity/unreal would give me job security since those two game engines are still popular :(

        i’m at a crossroads since none of the original c# library seems to function in godot (or unity), instead i need to use commands from the godot library. like, i need to use Debug.Print() in place of Console.WriteLog() to get the same result. if this is what’s going to happen, why not learn gdscript? i guess because i’d like to be able to use the language in other contexts

        sorry if i rambled a bit

        • ghostOfRoux();OP
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          11 months 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.

          • alunyanneгs 🏳️‍⚧️♀️
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            11 months ago

            I was eyeballing Godot in the past because their inhouse language is derived from python.

            yeah gdscript (godot’s inhouse language) is very pythony.

            My formal education was C# focused, and my professional experience is Java.

            jealous, our uni’s still teaching us c, c++ and java lol (i mean they’re great languages but still). as someone who’s still not in the job world yet, i wonder, what did they make you do using java?

            So Unity and Unreal isn’t too far out of the realm of possibilities.

            i just looked it up. unfortunately i was mistaken, unreal doesn’t officially support c# (you’ll need to install an unofficial plugin like unrealclr to be able to use c# in unreal). it officially supports c++ instead. but yeah, it’s still not out of the room of possibilities.

            My real issue is that I’m not creative enough I think to make games.

            eh i’m sure you’ll find inspiration at some point lol. especially if you interact with various media (like playing other peoples’ games, etc). fangames are a thing too.

            I might see about making a basic 2D platformer maybe in the future.

            that would be a good place to start

            • ghostOfRoux();OP
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              11 months 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.

              • alunyanneгs 🏳️‍⚧️♀️
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                11 months ago

                Yeah I’ve always said C# and Java are similar too lel. But how is C++ the bigger game dev language? Godot doesn’t support it right off the box (it supports it but you need to go through hoops to be able to get it to work).

                So like farm stuff? ^^; Those are the only things I’m getting from google when searching about feedyards and feed automation…

                • ghostOfRoux();OP
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                  11 months 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.

  • bobs_guns
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    11 months 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.