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Makinganappwithnoprogrammingexperience:whatareyouroptions?|AndroidAuthority

Making an app with no programming experience: what are

your options?
by:Obaro
886
Ogbo (http://www.androidauthority.com/author/obaroogbo/)July 31, 2015
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Android app development has grown exponentially since the Google Play store was launched in 2008 as Android Market. Today, there are estimated to be over 1.6
million apps on the Play Store, and 1.4 million apps on the iOS App Store, with a combined total download exceeding 200 billion. For more statistics, check out our Play
Store vs App Store comparison (http://www.androidauthority.com/google-play-store-vs-the-apple-app-store-601836/). It has become increasingly easier to develop and
deploy apps to both major markets, while there are also quite a few alternative mobile app market places including Amazon, Weibo and Windows Phone.
Java tutorial for beginners (http://www.androidauthority.com/java-tutorial-beginners-582147/)
I want to develop an Android app what languages should I learn? (http://www.androidauthority.com/want-develop-android-apps-languages-learn-391008/)

Why build an app

There are loads of reasons why an individual or company might want to build an app. For an individual, you could have an idea for app functionality and features, that
nothing currently on the market caters to. Companies might want to use an app for internal tasks and communications.

ADVERTISEMENT
Making, and releasing a mobile app is a very rewarding and fullling experience. And if the exhilaration isnt enough motivation, you can monetize and make money
from your app, either through ads, in app purchases or app sales.
Gone are the days when to make an app, you had to learn how to program rst. Of course, as a developer myself, I would encourage budding app-preneurs to learn how
to code, especially if you hope to develop a completely new app, or enter (and disrupt) an existing industry. However, not all types of apps are new, unique and/or
disruptive. Many apps will be built to handle the same kinds of use cases, only with custom content. For these kinds of apps, learning to code might not be the most
ecient use of your time and money.
If you intend to make an app with no programming experience, the options available to you include:

Contract a company
Depending on your budget constraints (or lack of), getting a professional app development company might be your best bet. Most app development companies can also
provide apps for multiple platforms, and will usually work with the client through planning, execution and deployment of the app. Additionally, the company can also
handle maintenance and upgrades if necessary.

Hire a freelancer

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Hire a freelancer
There are a ton of websites on which you can meet and hire a freelance app developer. A (non-exhaustive) list of freelance sites includes
Upwork (formerly Odesk) (https://www.upwork.com/)
Toptal (http://www.toptal.com)
Elance (http://www.elance.com)
Freelancer (http://www.freelancer.com)
Guru (http://www.guru.com)
GetACoder (http://www.getacoder.com)
Hiring a good freelancer is pretty much a matter of luck. Your mileage here may vary, and clients have reported bids on the same project varying in range from $22
to$10,000! Most freelance websites have a ratings system, and you can then judge a potential hire by his acquired ratings. However, using the ratings system is skewed
towards long time users, resulting in new users bidding really low to be competitive. Some websites aim to streamline the process of nding good freelancers, by having
a more involved vetting process. They usually have higher quality developers, but almost certainly cost more as a result.

Use an app building platform

When it comes down to it, a large number of mobile apps have identical features and functionality, especially apps for a business or website. For example, if you run a
restaurant business, and want to build an app for users to make orders. You can make do with a well designed generic app, that has your businesss logos, colors and
menu. Some great app building platforms that have caught our eye include

Andromo (http://andromo.com/)

(http://cdn01.androidauthority.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/aa-appmaker-andromo.jpg) Andromo bills itself as a point and click Android

app making platform. With Andromo, you can include maps, photo galleries, blog and news feeds, youtube videos, twitter and facebook feeds among others. In addition,
you can choose to embed ads within your app to make money. You can try it for free, before deciding to shell out cash for the service.

Appery.io (https://appery.io/)

(http://cdn03.androidauthority.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/aa-appmaker-appery.jpg)Appery is a platform that can be used to develop

hybrid apps targeting Android, iOS and Windows Phone devices. Appery apps can customized using HTML5, Javascript and CSS to build custom UI components, and or
custom code. Appery can also be tried for free.

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Hosting
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AppMakr (https://www.appmakr.com/)

(http://cdn03.androidauthority.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/aa-appmaker-appmakr.jpg)AppMakr appears to be the cheapest platform so

far, with pricing beginning from $1 per month. With AppMakr, you can build Android, iPhone and HTML5 apps that contain image galleries, videos, podcasts, push
messaging, analytics and ads. Currently, AppMakr claims to have been used to build over 2 million apps.

AppyPie (http://www.appypie.com)
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AppyPie (http://www.appypie.com)

(http://cdn01.androidauthority.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/aa-appmaker-appypie.jpg)AppyPie wants making apps to be as easy as pie.

There are a ton of templates (or categories) to choose from, and apps can be built for Android, Blackberry, iOS, Kindle and Windows. AppyPie also includes options for
analytics, monetization with ads and oers, as well as push notications. AppyPie also has a game builder, through which you can create a HTML5 game, and build it for
Android, iOS and HTML5 devices.

GameSalad (http://gamesalad.com/)

(http://cdn04.androidauthority.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/aa-appmaker-gamesalad.jpg)GameSalad claims on its front page that in an

hour, a total newbie can make theirrst game. They also, as at July 2015, claim to have over 65,000 games published, with over 80 of them making the top 100 games in
the US App Store. GameSalad supports Android, Kindle, iOS, Windows and HTML5 devices. The GameSalad game creator is available for download for both Mac and
Windows systems. GameSalad supports monetization with ads, and has an active community. Denitely worth checking out, if youre looking to build a mobile game.

GoodBarber (http://www.goodbarber.com)

(http://cdn03.androidauthority.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/aa-appmaker-goodbarber.jpg)GoodBarber generates native mobile apps for

both iOS and Android devices, as well as an HTML web app for other devices. It can also include maps, user generated content, provides trac, social, technical stats,
integrates both its own internal ad network as well as third party ad networks and can also include both Flurry and/or Google analytics. In addition, for a fee,
GoodBarber can publish your app to the Apple App Store for you, although you must have your developer account rst. GoodBarber provides a 30 day trial period.

MobileRoadie (http://mobileroadie.com)

(http://cdn04.androidauthority.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/aa-appmaker-mobileroadie.jpg)MobileRoadie can be used to build apps for

both iOS and Android devices, and has quite a few great features. Users can integrate video, audio and photos, news and twitter feeds, events and locations in their app.
An exciting feature oered by MobileRoadie is a Fan Wall, where users of the app can chat, and post photos, with each other in real time, in threaded conversations. You
can also create polls within your app. MobileRoadie has a relatively short free/trial period of 14 days.

ShoutEm (http://www.shoutem.com/)

(http://cdn01.androidauthority.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/aa-appmaker-shoutem.jpg)ShoutEm has many of the features expected,

including integrated advertising, analytics and push notications. In addition, you can integrate WordPress, Drupal, Facebook and Twitter into your app, as well as
interactive maps. If the available templates do not meet your requirements, you can contact ShoutEm for a custom look and feel.

Roundup
Much like how website design and deployment has became ubiquitous, mobile app development appears to be approaching the same fate. For apps that are not a
completely new idea, there is most likely an existing template, that can be easily modied and customized. For some apps, it can be benecial, and more economically
viable, to use an app building platform. For other types of apps, especially for totally new and/or unique ideas, either a freelancer or app development company will be

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smarter option. You can also nd an excellent developer to partner with.

the
Did we miss your favorite app building platform, or do you know any other ways to make an app with no programming experience? Share your thoughts in the
comments below.

GoogleHosting
Service
CustomDomain&BuildYour
OwnSiteStartWithFree
GoogleAppsTrial.

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Kate 8monthsago

interestingandverycomprehencive

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Lee 8monthsago

Thanks:)

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BranislavBlesk 9monthsago

Don'tforgetMITAppInventorhttp://appinventor.mit.edu/exp...

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RobInDutchland 9monthsago

ImademygameappwiththisitallowscodinginarelativelysimpleBasicstylelanguage,orC++libraries
http://www.appgamekit.com/

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NinjaBiteFilms 9monthsago

Java tutorial for beginners, part 2

(http://www.androidauthority.com/java-tutorial-beginnerspart-2-686571/)
by:Adam
295
Sinicki (http://www.androidauthority.com/author/adamsinicki/)April 14, 2016
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In part 1 of this series, Gary uploaded an awesome post and video (http://www.androidauthority.com/java-tutorial-beginners-582147/) explaining the basics of Java
programming. Java is the ocial programming language of Android; so if you want to build fully-edged Android apps from scratch, you need to familiarize yourself with how
the language works.

ADVERTISEMENT
This post will be carrying on from where that one left o and introducing a few new concepts such as arrays and conditional statements. Lets dive in!

Nitrous.io
You may recall that in part one, you wereusing koding.com (http://www.androidauthority.com/java-tutorial-beginners-582147/) in order to toy around with Java without the
needto set up Android Studio and the Android SDK etc.
Unfortunately, koding.com has evolved into a collaboration tool which makes getting it set up a little more complicated than before. If you arent already using Koding, then I
recommend startinga new Java project in nitrous.io (http://www.nitrous.io/) instead. Setting up an account takes a few minutes but its remarkably simple to get an
environment up and running. From there, this will behave just like Koding. Youll have your les on the left, the editor in the center and a terminal down the bottom where
you can type commands.

(http://cdn03.androidauthority.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/nitrous.png)
Remember, we can use the terminal and enterjavac followed by the le name (with the .java extension) in order to compile our code then use java + le name (sans
extension)to launch them.And dont forget to save the les rst after each edit!

Classes, variables and operators revisited

To recap, part one of this tutorial explained that Java was an object oriented language.This means that were using classes to dene objects (objects essentially containing
data/code and possessing some kind of value). Java is aclassylanguage
Broadly speaking then, a class is a small sectionof code that performs a specic job. Object oriented programming languages dont run linearly but rather refer to these
classesas and when theyre needed. That said, every Java program starts from the same point at the class called main(). So you need to make sure that you set o a chain of
events starting from within this class or none of your code will get executed!
As well as discussing classes, part one also discussed variables. Garydescribed variables as being like containers for information; information in the form of numbers, strings
and more. These variables are what enable us to manipulate our data throughout our code. For a much better and more detailed explanation of all this, be sure to check out
the rst post.

Just like at school, operations in brackets always come rst.

So if x referred to a coordinate, we might want to edit x in order to move a character across the screen. We would do this by using the statementx = x + 1 or x++.When we
change our data like this, we are using operators. You can also do multiplication by using * and handledivision with /.
As in mathematics there is anorder of operations (an operator precedence) for mathematical expressions.Java will always prioritize multiplication, followed by division and
then plus and minus. This means that3 * 2 + 1is 7, not 9! Like maths, you can change this order though by using parenthesis (brackets). Just like at school, operations in
brackets always come rst and if you have multiple brackets, then the innermost brackets will be given priority.

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By using operators you can transform the value of your variable(as inx = x + 1orx = 50) to change its value. We also saw in part one that strings could be snipped apart,
combined and otherwise manipulated. All this will come in very handy while programming but if you want to get really fancy, then you need to look at some of the other
types of variables such as arrays!

An introduction to arrays
An array is a little more complicated than the other types of variables that weve addressed so far. Thats because an array actually containsmultiplepieces of data. Think of it
like a shopping list which contains multiple strings such as apples, oranges, eggs etc. If we continue with the container metaphor, then while strings and variables act like
boxes, arrays act a little more like ling cabinets or bookshelves.
To create an array like this, you simply dene a variable as normal but add square brackets to the end. You can then populate your array with the values you want. For
example:
StringShoppingList[]={"apples","oranges","pears","milk","eggs"};
System.out.println(ShoppingList[3]);

So whats happening here? Well rst, were creating a string array and lling it with our shopping. Then were simply retrieving item three and printing it by putting the
number 3 in the square brackets.
Another thing you can do with an array is to retrieve its size as an integer. This then means we can use a loop to run through the entire thing:
for(inti=0;i<ShoppingList.length;i++){
System.out.println(ShoppingList[i]);
}

To test this, take the HelloWorld program from part 1 and replace the line System.out.println(Hello, World)with the denition ofShoppingList and thefor loop from
above.This will now display all the items on our shopping list with each one on a new line:

(http://cdn03.androidauthority.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/shopping-list.png)
One thing to note is thatthe index of the rst item in anyarray is actually 0 and not 1. This means that the index of the last item is actually onelowerthan the length of the
array. So if you tried to return item 5 then you would get an error. There are 5 objects, but the last one is stored at 4. Welcome to the confusing world of programming!
I actually tricked you a little bit here though for the sake of a useful lesson. In reality, this probably isnt how you would gothrough a list. Instead you would use a foreach
loop which looks like so:
for(Stringelement:ShoppingList){
System.out.println(element);
}

In the foreach loop above the variable element (which is of typeString) takes the value of each itemin the array, sequentially. So the rst time around the loop element is
equal to apples, on the next iteration it is oranges, and so on.Next time Ill talk a little about using maps, which allow you to look up specic information in a much more
dynamic manner.

Conditional statements
So we already know how to use loops to perform the same task over and over. You might remember this from last time:
for(inti=1;i<=10;i++){
System.out.println("iis:"+i);
}

This code simply increased the value ofiup until the number 10. Loops form a big chunk of programming in general because we often want our code to do things that would
take too long for a human to handle manually.
But counting and adding up numbers will only get us so far. For a program to bereallyuseful it needs to be able to react to the data and make decisions on that basis. This is
where conditional statements come in.
A conditional statement basically means that youre testing whether a statement is true before running a piece of code. We do this by asking if something is true, then
proceed to the next step if it is. You do this all the time in your real life: IFhungry,THENeat.
The best way to explain this is simply to demonstrate it:
for(inti=1;i<=10;i++){
if(i==5){
System.out.println("Halfwaythere!");
}
System.out.println("iis:"+i);
}

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This is the same loop we had earlier but now we also have a conditional statement thats being tested each time the loop repeats itself.if(i==5)askswhether value ofi isthe
same as 5. Note that we use == to do this, not =.If you only use one = sign you will get an error. A single = means assign a value, like i=1, but a double == means is equal
to?The statement you want to test always goes inside the brackets and the following code goes inside the curly brackets.
If our conditional statement turns out to be true, then thenext bit of coderuns and in this case prints Halfway there! to the screen:

(http://cdn04.androidauthority.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/halfway-there.png)
Its not terribly pretty though because the it says halfway there andtheni is 5. Surely halfway there should be in the middle?Ideally, it would make more sense if we could
showeitherone of those sentences but not both. This is where our next keywordcomes in:else.

Elsesimply tells Java to run another section of code if the statement isnottrue (IF hungry, THEN eat, ELSE go to bed).To do this, we follow the closing brackets on ourif
statement immediately with the word else and a new set of brackets:
for(inti=1;i<=10;i++){
if(i==5){
System.out.println("Halfwaythere!");
}else{
System.out.println("iis:"+i);
}
}

But what if you want to test more than one statement in order? In that case,else ifcomes in handy:
for(inti=1;i<=10;i++){
if(i==5){
System.out.println("Halfwaythere!");
}elseif(i==10){
System.out.println("Finished");
}else{
System.out.println("iis:"+i);
}
}

See if you can work out whats happening here. This basically tests the rst statement (i == 5) and if that isnt true, tests the next statement (i==10). The nal else will only
execute then if both of the others turn out to be false.
One more trick when using conditional statements is to use and & or. These basically allow you to run a piece of code only whentwo statements arebothtrue (in the case
ofand) oreitherof the two statements aretrue (in the case ofor). We use || to represent orand we use && to representand.
So if we had two users who could both gain access to a system for instance, we could say:
StringUser="Adam";
if(User=="Adam"||User=="Hannah"){
System.out.println("Hello"+User);
}

Essentially,andandoract like logic gates as used in electronics but you dont need to worry about that!

Comparing variables
Most conditional statements will check the value of variables in some wayand oftenthis will meancomparing the value of two dierent variables. We already saw this when
we comparedstrings in order to check a username. Youcould do this with an integer if you were using a PIN.
But there are other ways to compare dierent variables too. For instance, the symbol <means lessthan, while the symbol > means greaterthan. So you could say:if(age >
18)in order to set a minimum age for your app. This wouldnt be quite right for most applications though seeing as age >18 is exclusive of 18! In other words, this code would
only let people19and over in!
So instead, we might prefer to sayif(age >= 18)which basically translates to greaterthan or equal to. Now we are letting people in who are 18 orover. We can also do the
opposite with <=. If you look back to the for loop above you will notice that the ending condition wasi<=10, meaning the loop would continue while i was 10 or less.Finally,
!= means isnt equal to. In this case, the code will only run if the two variables arenotthe same.
Its also possible to nest your if statements. This way you can create some pretty complex sets of conditions to build interesting interactive apps. If youre familiar with Excel,
then you may already have some experience with nested if statements!

Next time
Now you have conditional statements under your belt, you should nd its possible to start thinking like a programmer. You now have all the concepts you need tobuild the
backbone of some pretty complex programs! Learn to combine this with the Android SDK and the skys the limit!

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But were a long way from done. Next time were going to look at how you can import classes, which basically gives usmore commands to play around withand extends the
capabilities of Java. Im going to usethis to get user inputs and make a basic math game.Ill also be addressing how to use maps and some other concepts and will look in
more detail at some coding best practices and the nature of Java.
If youre itching to keep going though, refer back to part one (http://www.androidauthority.com/java-tutorial-beginners-582147/) of this series, where you can nd a lot of
resources and suggested further reading!
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