Thursday, March 24, 2011

Unit Converter App with Source Code

Note : Good news for avid learners... Here is my free training on How to Design and Develop a simple Unit Converter App.....  Enroll and enjoy... Happy learning...

http://som-itsolutions.teachable.com/

For the past few days i was in a dilemma about ethics, openness and honesty... the reason behind this was should i show the whole world the source code of my Android apps? as i don’t have a job, i thought of earning some money for my family by offering training to the people who want to learn how to develop Android apps... but then i thought that as i am using an open source platform to develop the Android App, i should show the source code to the others so that if someone really wants to learn, he can learn it from this source code... being a believer in Swami Vivekananda, i thought not to do business just by selling knowledge...if i face difficulty in feeding my family in the future, there is definitely another way to earn money, but not by selling the knowledge which i got because of the Almighty.

You can download the app from Google Play and here goes the source code of an Unit Converter App which i started developing to help some of my students...



if somebody can learn from it, i will be the happiest person...

Here is a screenshot of this app...


i have used Strategy Pattern to develop this App.

Hope this helps others.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Unfolding the mystery...

There is an absolute ecstasy in unfolding the mystery...i know it from my own experience... when i first came to the IT industry, i used to wonder how things actually work inside... however, with experience and knowledge, these days i can decipher a fragment of code of a working system...today i know a little bit of why an OOAD system has been designed the way it is....and when this mystery gets unfolded, the joy is no less than that of a scientist’s discovery... probably this is the only reason i love software...

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

How to become a software developer without spending a penny...


This post is for all those engineering students of computer science in remote places of India who cannot afford hefty amount to buy licensed software... i faced this dilemma when i first started my software career... i would like to share my experience with you...

the best way to learn software is to use Linux. i use Ubuntu. hence i can advise on this. anyone can order an Ubuntu CD from the https://shipit.ubuntu.com/ . if someone has a braodband connection he can download Ubuntu from http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download. however, installing Ubuntu is not the end... one will have to install the necessary package for C/C++ developement. These packages can be installed over the internet through the Synaptic Package Manager in Ubuntu desktop menu. The package for C/C++ is the build essential package... one may like to install the eclipse IDE from the software repository... the next thing is to install the OPEN-JDK package for working using Java... Once these things are done, the basic development environment for a student is done.

However, there are still some people who are simply familiar with Windows and do not have the money to buy Visual Studio...many poor students fall in the trap of pirated version of Visual Studio... but that is unethical... right....for those students i would suggest to go for Eclipse as the IDE... For a C/C++ compiler in a Windows machine one may go for Cygwin... this is how i have configured my Windows development environment...

however, its not only the development environment a student looks for... he needs a productivity tool... here again i would like to suggest the poor students not to fall in the trap of pirated MS-Office CD...if you want an offline productivity tool, go for free OpenOffice... and if you have a broadband connection, you may opt for Google Docs...

i think for a poor student in India, the tug of war between zeal to learn and ethics always plays havoc...i hope i have thrown some lights how to quench the thirst for knowledge without compromising on ethics...