The first day of the Programming Phones Workshop went well, some 20 people dropped in for a short or longer time, the majority experimented with Android but smaller numbers looked at the iPhone and Blackberry. We didn’t have anyone wanting to look at Windows Mobile this time.
Blackberry provided some great tutorials, but with our set up it appeared that students need to part with $20 to get a “signed key” (csi file) before they could test their applications. We are trying to find out if their academic programme will allow educational use without students having to pay the fee.
We do have an educational link with the Apple Developer Programme, the trouble with that is that you need to develop on a Mac, and we don’t have Macs in our labs, fortunately the people who were interested had bought their Mac Books with them. After quite a bit of head bashing, help from books, online tutorials and a fellow participant they got their first app working with both input and output. The problem that had taken most time was lack of linking to “First Responder” and “File Owner” for the input and output, and the differences to Visual BASIC and C with which they were familiar.
The larger group was looking at Android, and quite a few started with Hello World, and some even loaded this on their own phones. A lot of the problems stemmed again from the differences to the programming environments the guys were use to. The lack of a visual editor caused some consternation, and for some Java was a new language. Those with a bit more experience were planning larger projects that would help focus their skills.
The success of the afternoon was due to a number of people: Nick and others from ITNG for getting the software we needed on the lab machines, Karsten for helping those who got stuck, and everyone there for helping each other.
We will be running the workshop again today (Tuesday 15th June, 2010), it will be informal and will help beginners get started and offer a challenge for the more advanced.
Shirley Williams 