On Fri, 23 Nov 2018 20:47:04 +0000, Bill wrote:

That looks interesting, but I think "later" is the operative word.

Hi Bill,
I apologize for not having posted as I was vacationing for the holiday.
I agree with you that "later" is the time for decompilers!

In looking again at the Butterfield 4 app, I decided that I ought to get
an understanding of how to use the inbuilt debugger in Android Studio.
I agree with you that debugging is a skill we desperately need now!

Looking for some examples led me to:
https://codelabs.developers.google.c...d/index.html#0
which takes us back to where we started with Hello World, but adds
logging. The course says a single simple line should appear in the debug
logs, but I get loads of lines of info, warnings and errors, most of
which is stuff I dont understand.

I just saw this (and your followup), so I'm not sure if you still recommend
it or not. It's good to recommend or not, as we both wasted a LOT of time on
the last of the four butterfield videos, and yet, the first three were great
(e.g., I'd recommend that first Butterfield video for every noob!).

For the vehicles and the boat, I have a huge box of spanners, all
different. I can no longer lift it. The boat has a glorious collection
of almost every thread known to man. I had to make my own spanners for
the keel bolts in the milling machine.

It's nice you have a milling machine! I have metric and imperial tap and die
sets, and of course, wrenches (aka "spanners") of all sizes, but no milling
machine yet!

My passwords are kept in a MySQL database. I'm now up to about 140
entries. If I had different birthdays for different accounts, they would
probably have to be added to that database. Different birthdays would
help to confuse the gatherers of big data, but I also like the idea of
on online birthday that's easily looked up.

Bill - I found a great set of tutorials (more on them later), where one that
I haven't done yet is all about SQL databases.

While I generally shy away from heavy accents due to the inability to
comprehend what say when they speak fast, this guy seems to have a series
of GREAT beginner videos ... replete with working source code!
https://codinginflow.com/app-ideas-learn-android-programming

He has a four-video series on working with SQLite in Android Studio:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrnPJCHvNZuBMJmll0xy2L2McYInT3aiu

I haven't done that particular series, but I've done a half dozen of his
other stuff, where _all_ his supplied source code worked perfectly the first
time!

Hence, I have no reason to believe these won't work also, when and if I
tackle SQL databases in the future, such as this 13-part SQL series where he
creates a multiple-choice quiz app in Android Studio:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrnPJCHvNZuDCyg4Usq2gHMzz6_CiyQO7

To give you an idea of this guy's well organized coding examples, I'll post
separately a few of the apps I have created using his tutorials.

As I say, I may well downgrade to the text based tutorial course
mentioned above for a time. It seems to be fairly up to date.

Hi Bill,
Like you, I am seeking out the best resources, where I did spend some time
on these tutorials, every one of which I tested worked out fine.
https://codinginflow.com/app-ideas-learn-android-programming

Since he provides extremely reliable and complete source code which hasn't
even once failed on the first try, and since he has an accent, what I end up
doing, which works for me, is this simple learning sequence:
1. First I copy & paste the source code & run on emulation & on the phone
2. Since that works the first time, without any errors, I don't learn much
3. Still, I can play with the app to get a good idea of what it does
4. Then, I read all the video comments (usually worthless though)
5. And then I watch the video, over and over and over - learning each time
6. Lastly, I zip up the working directory & experiment with commands

The good news is that this guy's source ALWAYS works the first time.
So you can spend time LEARNING and EXPERIMENTING.

Until an experiment goes wrong, you don't spend time DEBUGGING.
And, when an experiment goes wrong, you know exactly what you changed.

If you look at this guy's videos, let me know what you think.
I wish I had seen them sooner.

To help you and others, I'll post some of my results separately.

I've been trying to stick with Android 4 as the basic development level,
as I have loads of machines of that era to test on.

Hehhehheh ... Bill ... you are wise ... as I wasted a LOT of time trying to
run things that only work on Oreo, where I can't yet get an emulator to work
with Oreo, so it was a complete waste of time.

Hence, like you, I've learned (the hard way) to stick with API 14 (Android
4) for as long as I can as my targeted Android device selection!

Bill - that just reminded me of the infuriating issues I had last week with
the various emulators, where I tested a half dozen of them, specifically
C:\app\editor\android\emu\{google,arm,ms,geny,andy ,blue}

Here's a quick snippet of my analysis of how they work with Android Studio:
o Google (Android ?, fails on older AMD CPUs but is the default for AS)
o Arm (Android ?, nobody recommends these as they are too slow to be usable)
o Microsoft (Android 6, works great on older AMD CPUs, integrates into AS)
o Genymotion (Android 7.1, best overall for speed & CPU & AS compatibility)
o Andyroid (Android 7.1.2, simple setup where AS instantly recognized it)
o Bluestacks (Android 7.1.1, simple setup & runs fast, but AS didn't see it)

In the end, I had so many emulators competing with each other that I wiped
them all out and just installed the Genymotion emulator, which is
recommended by all as being the most compatible, and the fastest.
o Genymotion has a toolbar button integrated into Android Studio
o Genymotion has free technical support by email
o Genymotion has all the emulators you could want to have
o And it's fast
o But best of all - it works just fine with my older AMD CPU

The only Genymotion drawback I see is that I can't get anything higher than
API 25 to work in Genymotion on my older AMD CPU (i.e., API 26 and above
fails, i.e., Oreo & Pie), but for now, that's good enough since all the
emulators worked up to and including Nougat.