25 years ago. As our nation was building up the technology-based economy from that of a manufacturing base, the government education policymakers put quite a bit of effort and resources to groom an engineering workforce. So in the 1990s, Engineering diplomas/ degrees were strongly encouraged and were highly sort after. My partner and I were the beneficiaries of the policy and obtained our diplomas in good time (subsequently degrees).
During my diploma course, my parents got me a 386 personal computer (those with 5 1⁄4-inch floppy diskettes, running on MS-DOS) which costs them a month’s salary combined. We were not well to do then, they have to work extra shifts to get enough to feed the family. I was very touched, so I vowed to utilise it to the maximum for me and my sibling’s education. gotten A-distinction grades in anything related to computers (my bro and I played PC games through the night… ). I grew to like programming a lot, C++ was my strength then. However, just when I thought I could make a career out of this, I decided to join the public service because they offered undergrad scholarship, something my parents could not afford to send me to. Programming professionally was out of the window.
Fast-forward to early 2000s. After all the hype on the Y2K bug which some labelled as a “hoax”, my interests in programming rekindled with the Palm Pilot personal digital assistants (or PDAs) popularised by its mobility. I started to program “apps” using “pocket C” thinking that this would the future of mobile computing if my Nokia dumb phone and PDAs were to be one device (familiar?). So I built a few personal programmes for my own productivity and shared among colleagues who also used the palm pilot. The “apps” were very well received. Then that’s it. The rest of my life was again consumed by work that has nothing to do with my academic training, and interests.
Fast-forward again to recent years. Mobile app development has been the in-thing because of the rapid developments in mobile devices. Everyone took everything and made into mobile apps, then they call it innovation. Often newsworthy as well. So learning to code is like the trendy thing to do. Pretty much like how years ago the education was geared towards engineering. The trend of kids attending coding courses also picked up quite tremendously. I too tried to teach my sons coding, but their interest stopped at Lego Mindstorms EV3 codes, my younger one went on to play with the Rasberry Pi, and to a small extent, played with Minecraft mods. Of course, I was excited. But only recently that I have the time to learn and teach and relearn programming/ coding/ app development etc … whatever you want to call it. Through these, I discovered the MIT App Inventor tool.
Solving a simple problem
Writing a program is to solve a problem and make life easier and simpler. If not, there is no point. It all starts with a problem definition. So there is this situation where every week I will have to help my kids learn their spelling. They pass you the list, and you recite the words for them to practice spelling the words, either by writing or spoken. In order to make my life simpler, combined with the kids’ desires for playing on mobile phones. I thought if I could do write an app to automate this process, i.e. someone to automatically read out the words and then assess if the kid’s spelling is correct or not, I will have time for my own game. I had the idea for a couple of years. Typically coding takes a long time, plus the debugging and testing efforts makes it bit daunting. Only when I got to know this MIT App Inventor tool that I realise I can maybe start and finish in one day. After playing with the AI for a couple of hours, the first version of the spelling app is up and running. It is incredibly simple to code using the tool. The kids love the app.
MIT App Inventor – Uses block flow diagrams to enable your coding. Uses the ai-companion app on your device to enable running and testing your app real-time. You then compile the codes into an
Publishing it
Another year past, leaving the app only used within the family and friends. I wanted to share with more people who may find it useful. However, because it was done rather raw, not professional and the visuals were not pretty. I have not taken it anywhere else. After I began to build this blog and have my own time, with that “just do it” moment, I decided to publish it on Google Play. And I learn more things.
First – Set up an
Next – F
Finally – Publish it. There are more Google tools, but I will leave it there first. Will get back when I have more apps to publish or to update this one.
Here is the app on google play. Have fun.
gobassky