A brief guide to starting mobile development

A brief introduction to my professional background

I started mobile development later in 2019 after graduating from the University with a bachelor’s degree in Agronomy. It may sound weird to jump into tech from agriculture but having had a love for technologies since my childhood, and willingness to contribute to addressing pressing farming challenges by harnessing the power of emerging technologies, I didn’t hesitate to decisively start teaching myself computer programming. With this being said, I don’t consider myself as someone changing career but a professional who leverages technology to take his agriculture career to the next level. I still work with agronomists, farmers and other stakeholders in the agri-food value chain and most of the apps that I have developed so far help farmers and agripreneurs use precisely calculated agrochemicals and find up to date farming information and potential markets.

My experience

As many of you might have read or heard that you can start developing real world apps in a few weeks with YouTube videos and/or tutorials, this is possible or impossible depending on various factors such as your technical background. For instance, if you are already a professional web developer, you can find it easy to start developing mobile apps especially if you choose to use React Native framework. On the other hand, I can’t get my head around the fact that a complete beginner can do the same in short timeline.

Speaking from personal experience, I didn’t start developing apps in a few weeks. When I started, I thought I would release the first app in at least two weeks but this was far from the reality. In September 2019, I applied to an American online university where I took credited courses in programming fundamentals (in Python), Programming 1 (Java), Programming 2 (Java), Databases 1 and Linear Algebra all in one year. This gave me foundational skills and as I am passionate about mobile development, I started teaching myself android development since then. As I already knew about Java, it didn’t take me years to be able to develop an operational app for farmers. Did I stop learning? Not really. I still learn and will always learn. Technology evolves at an unpredictable pace so developers and engineers have to stay relevant. In addition to android native development with Java and Kotlin, I have considered giving a shot cross-platform development with Flutter framework (It’s been a year now).

Conclusion

Teaching yourself mobile development like any other tech stack requires you to start with the basics and get familiar with the fundamentals. As a beginner, if you are interested in cross-platform development, it is recommended that you start with native development (iOS or Android). This way you will profoundly get used to the ins and outs of mobile development. Also, make sure you understand how computers work under the hood; just an introduction to computer science will smoothen your never-ending learning journey. The fact that you will always learn doesn’t technically mean you won’t develop solutions to real world problems, you will rather develop and learn along the way.