Upcoming Presentation: Android Developer Conference

Turns out I will be speaking at the Android Developer Conference (AnDevCon) in Santa Clara, California on December 1st, 2015 to December 3rd, 2015.

If you’re unfamiliar with AnDevCon, it is a big deal. It is probably one of the better, if not the best, development conferences focusing on everything Android.

Per the AnDevCon website:

AnDevCon is the technical conference for professional software developers and engineers building Android apps. Offering mobile app development training, embedded Android secrets, and Android app development tutorials and classes, AnDevCon is the biggest, most info-packed, most practical Android conference in the world.

All About Java Modifier Keywords

I’ve been a Java programmer for a while now, however, recently someone asked me a question regarding one of Java modifier keywords and I had no clue what it was. This made it obvious to me that I needed to brush up on some Java that goes beyond actual coding and algorithms.

After a few Google searches, I got bits and pieces on the topic, but never really the full story, so I’m using this post as a way to document the subject. This is a great interview question to test your computer science book-smarts.

Sort An Integer Array Using Bubble Sort With Java

Previously you saw an implementation of Quicksort, one of the better sorting algorithms. This time we’re going to look at a much inferior sorting algorithm which generally makes its appearance in introduction to computer science type courses. I’m talking about the Bubble Sort algorithm.

Bubble Sort via Wikipedia:

Bubble sort, sometimes referred to as sinking sort, is a simple sorting algorithm that repeatedly steps through the list to be sorted, compares each pair of adjacent items and swaps them if they are in the wrong order.

The Bubble Sort algorithm is sub-par because of the outrageous time-complexity that it has for all sorting calls and we’re going to see why.

Create A Minesweeper Game With Native Android

So recently I was presented with a challenge. Make a Minesweeper game using native Android with no additional frameworks such as Unity3D or similar.

Minesweeper via Wikipedia:

A single-player puzzle video game. The objective of the game is to clear a rectangular board containing hidden “mines” without detonating any of them, with help from clues about the number of neighboring mines in each field.

This task can be accomplished many ways. For example we could choose to use OpenGL, a 2D canvas, or something else. In this particular tutorial we’re going to be using a 2D canvas because it is simple and acceptable for a game with minimal to no animations.;

Create A Couchbase Lite Todo List With Native Android

By now, if you’ve been keeping up with my tutorials, you can probably put two-and-two together and determine that I’m really trying to get into the NoSQL world. Up until now I’ve brushed upon Google Firebase, Facebook Parse, and Apache CouchDB, most of which I’ve done some kind of todo list type application. Now of course, many of my previous tutorials were based on hybrid app development instead of native.

This time we’re going to take a look at Couchbase’s version of NoSQL in a mobile Android application. In particular a native Android application.

Sort An Integer Array With the Quicksort Algorithm And Java

Circling back to data structures and algorithms, we’re now going to take a look at the efficient sorting algorithm known as Quicksort.

Quicksort via Wikipedia:

Sometimes called partition-exchange sort, is an efficient sorting algorithm, serving as a systematic method for placing the elements of an array in order.

The idea behind Quicksort is to take a large array of values and divide it into two smaller arrays, doing this recursively, and swapping elements.

This is one of the fundamental algorithms you’ll learn in any computer science course. It is also a very good question that could be asked in a job interview for an engineering type position. I’m going to help you through it using Java.

Various Graph Search Algorithms Using Java

If you’ve been keeping up with my blog, I’ve made a topic regarding Binary Search Trees, but another very important topic in computer science and software engineering is in regards to Graphs.

Graphs via Wikipedia:

A graph data structure consists of a finite (and possibly mutable) set of nodes or vertices, together with a set of ordered pairs of these nodes (or, in some cases, a set of unordered pairs). These pairs are known as edges or arcs.

When interviewing for a new programming or software engineering position, it is incredibly likely that you are asked a question on this topic. Because of this, I figured it would be a good idea to go over a few of the Graph search algorithms.