It is the first week back at uni (yay) and I had nothing better to do. Actually that is a lie, I was assigned three practicals on my first day back that I had to complete by the end of the week but instead of doing that, I decided to attend a random lecture. You’re welcome. So here is a completely unbiased review of the very first lecture of COMPX202. I may or may not have attended because I found the lecturer was hot.
Anyways, the class started off pretty chill with the lecturer going through the course outline, tutorials, and class reps. The lecture hall was quite empty and no one was really participating during the class, which I’m assuming is because of the gloomy weather. I mean, everybody these days is sick around me.
Twenty minutes into the lecture, we started a discussion on androids and how they are loved by everyone around the world. About 58% of the world uses smartphones which is pretty cool, I guess. We looked at what Android actually is because, in this paper, students have to design their very own Android application which sounds really cool in my opinion. So from what I learned, Android was founded in 2003 and then bought by Google in 2005. Each version of Android had a codename after famous chocolates or desserts. Previous models had names such as Jelly Bean, Eclair, Oreo, etc.
Then, we were shown an interesting feature that all Android phones possess. I couldn’t take part in this activity as I am a very loyal Apple user, but basically if you go to your phone’s settings, there is a hidden feature where when you click to check your Android version under software information, there is a hidden game that you can play. They came out with different games and animations for the different versions.
Then we dived more into the development of Androids and there are rumours about a new operating system that might take over. It is currently being developed by Google. If this is something that you care about, then you have been warned, and you must thank the Nexus gods for blessing you with such crucial information. Finally, the lecturer went over some of the programming languages that will be used to create the applications and ways to make them user friendly. There are a lot of considerations that must be taken into account when creating an application such as the limited screen space, orientations, touchscreen interaction, memory, power. All of these elements could cause major issues for the application and must be dealt with efficiently.
Although this lecture was really interesting, I felt relieved that I am not taking this paper this year because I don’t think I would have been able to cope with creating an application at this time of the year.
