UW Certificate in Android Application Development

Instructor Mike Maas of the University of Washington Certificate in Android Application Development shares highlights of the program. Visit UW Professional & Continuing Education to learn more: http://www.pce.uw.edu/certificates/android-app-development.html.

Video Transcript:

It’s more than just a piece of paper that says you’ve completed X amount of hours of instruction, it’s really practical. We want them to have at least one working awesome app that they can showcase and use it either as portfolio piece or even make money off of it. If they are looking to get work in the field, they can go say «hey you wanna check out my work? Go look in the app store. I’ve got something up there.» That’s really important to us.

We cover the full spectrum of android development. Just getting the thing up and running all the way to more advanced interface development. Doing really interesting things even animation, sound, media, video, all the way to more advanced communication. Taking things like integrating with Facebook, Twitter, or storing stuff into the cloud or getting stuff from the cloud, really building complex apps that you would be expected to use in a mobile environment.

If you’re a go getter or you’ve worked with a programming language before, or if you’ve had multiple programming language experience, you’ll be fine. I think you have to have some measure of enthusiasm to just not only come to class for 3 hours but then spend a good chunk of your weekend working on your app, or homework, or on doing background searches and just understanding the problem.

I don’t look at it as like android vs. apple. They’re all kind of transient technologies. You know three years ago, we would have been talking about developing for Blackberry RIM or RIM blackberry devices and stuff like that. These things are going to come and go. What I’m more interested in is taking android as an example of mobile development and how to make money in an app store.

I am totally not against you just going out and reading a book or just jumping right in and trying to build an app but the problem is that the frustrations kind of pile up quickly, and that’s what the instructors are here for. I’ve hit many of those frustrations — stupid things that I can save you a lot of time upfront by going «don’t do it this way because you’re bound to hit a problem,» or «hey use java compiler 1.6 because 1.7 will blow this up.»

If you have an example piece you can say «hey I’ve already got an app on the market.» Most people who are developers can’t say that, but that’s something that we hope to have for you once you get out of the class. You’ve got some real experience and some practical bites in the real world.

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