Late Night PC

I want to build an application targeting the Android platform. I'm a little rusty with Java but I really like developing with Eclipse (I've been using it for some other stuff like PHP development). The ADT plugin got me started with the sample applications pretty quickly but now that it's time to deviate and build something of my own I have to set a nice low goal that I can knock out with a high chance of success. Then I can iterate and go a little deeper on the next pass. To start with I think I'll play with drawing primitive graphics. There's an API example called DrawPoints with some code that just spouts out random points on the screen. I took a fair chunk of that and stuffed it in to the "Hello, Android" application I built earlier.

All in all the activity's pretty straightforward and Eclipse makes it even easier. I'd post the code for drawing but it's almost identical to DrawPoints at this stage. The next step is to get some new code in there. I decided to go for my old standby, the Hilbert curve. I modified the code to suit the drawing environment but didn't get results right away. I learned a few things about debugging with the Android emulator and ADT in the process.

As I've been getting started with Android I decided to take some notes. What follows is something I wrote down as I was working on getting a first sample to build and download from Eclipse using ADT. I followed the instructions from Google and tried the troubleshooting directions. My platform is OpenSuse 10.3 Linux. This note might be helpful if you're trying to develop for Android.

I know I'm not the only one casting about for good application ideas to build on Android. Now that I have the samples building and running and I've got a little time on my hands, my plan for today is to move on to building some of my own original code. Since it's based on Java SE and not micro edition it should also be possible to port some interesting applications over. To start with I'm thinking of something simple and non-interactive like a screensaver or other eye-candy. After that I've got a couple other things up my sleeve but I need to try out the platform to see what's really doable.