Goodbye to that app (French Revolution Day By Day)

It has finally been taken off the Google Play store. It was coming, I knew it – the writing had long been on the wall, not least with the issues of privacy policies and GDPR…

TBH, I think I could have escaped this one (right), as the latest requirement seems to involve meta-information about the app rather than the app itself.

Oh well, the series reached 16 posts in total on the Eyes On Android blog, and I did complete the app. I had seen some other ‘Build your own Android App’ series quietly disappear. Gratifyingly, more than a thousand people downloaded it, but I suspect there was never more than 100 instances loaded at any one time.

On reflection

On reflection, what are the main points to share? Five things.

Firstly, the importance of Stack Overflow (“Where Developers Learn, Share, and Build Careers”). Sometimes it seemed like battling for progress inch by inch. And, as often as not, the necessary help came via Stack Overflow.

Second, it seems ever harder for ‘amateurs’ to keep up with app development. Ever changing technologies – Kotlin, comes to mind (but what are Kubernetes? (or GameFace, or tomorrow’s even newer thing?…)) – seem to be spinning past ever faster. Eroding learning built up over time, as the game changes one more time. Maybe it’s just me.

Thirdly, that if I were do it today, I would do it in Flutter…

Fourthly, my lack of graphics expertise really held me back. It became a strange, text-heavy app. Words were all I had.

Fifthly, and finally, doing it in Android meant it was all free!

The end – to repeat, for my embarrassment – was due to messing up the encrypted keys to access and update the app in Google Play.

French Revolution

BTW, it is dated for me by even being about the French Revolution.

I do like history, and that was a passing enthusiasm at the time –  I remember reading the heavily detailed “The French Revolution” by Christopher Hibbert, loaned from Croydon Library (and also “Vive La Revolution” by the comedian Mark Steel). Credit where it’s due.

2015

2015 is when the app was created. Seems an age ago now – from a simpler, less busy time (when I had spare capacity to do app coding, for one thing).

And now it’s over. The digital bits have gone, crumbled in the great server farm in the cloud, and defragmented into another – probably better – existence.

Sandy, where does the time go?