I’ve been a professional software dev for over 30 years … geeze, that’s hard to imagine.
My focus since 2001 has been mobile devices and location-based systems. After nearly a decade as a Microsoft Mobile Development MVP (Most Valuable Professional – Microsoft’s term … not mine), I now focus on Android and iOS development. I spent many years more passionate about Android than iOS but since 2015 that’s been changing. I love the openness and freedom of Android but there is a definite elegance to the iOS way of doing things. My server-side work tends to be in Microsoft .NET. At times I like to use Xamarin for my mobile development which now allows me to use .NET & C# for device development as well. Honestly … whether working in Java, Objective-C, or C#/.NET … what I really love is creating cool apps and mentoring other developers to do so.
I’ve been an independent software consultant since 2000. In the time since I first became independent I’ve had the opportunity to co-found multiple software startups and serve in a consulting role to several more. I’ve been blessed to have had the opportunity write books on Android development, write a number of articles on the topic of mobile development, speak at several conferences, and to have served as a contributing “expert” resource on mobile software development issues to a variety of media outlets. These days I spend a lot of my time creating software developer training materials for Pluralsight. You can find the list of my courses here.
My wife and I live in Celebration, FL (checkout Celebration and Celebration Town Center). Celebration is an amazing little town and it’s just 3 miles from Walt Disney World. There are days where we leave our place, drive to the park, and are walking through the park gates just 15 minutes after walking out our front door … now that’s cool!
I’m blessed to be part of an amazing church family at illuminate church here in Celebration, FL. Whenever you’re in the Disney World area, I encourage you to visit our church. We currently meet at Celebration High School at 10am on Sundays. If you drive straight from Magic Kingdom to the other end of World Drive and then turn right you’ll be there. Everyone is welcome!
Jim Wilson (a.k.a. hedgehogjim) 
Android for .NET Developers: 1 Getting Started (5/24/2013).
I am struggling to configure an Android Development Environment on my Dell XPS 8300 Desktop PC. It seems that the downloads referred to in your introductory course have changed since May of this year. I would like to learn how to port (i.e. rewrite in Java) a Windows application that I developed to my Nexus 7 (2013) as well as my Kindle HD (as well as other devices).
Hi CTDeveloper;
Can you tell me which ones are not working for you? I’ll get the correct ones then post them here and update the course.
Thanks,
Jim
I downloaded a newer zip file for ADT dated 19 February, 2013:
adt-bundle-windows-x86_64-20130219.zip.
I found JDK 6 by selecting “Previous Releases” and downloaded and ran the exe file. So far, so good. Now I am getting an error in my first project (MainActivity.java). It seems to have a problem resolving the variable ‘R’ as in:
getMenuInflater().inflate(R.menu.main, menu);
I will try to resolve this error and let you know what I find…
Thanks for getting back to me. I did not see your response till yesterday.
Regards, Chuck (CTDeveloper)
The current Developer.android.com/sdk/index.html#download provides a newer zip file dated 29 July, 2013:
adt-bundle-windows-x86_64-20130729.zip
[…] all courses from Jim Wilson. He is really good lecturer. You can read more about him on his blog. Pluralsight is not free, BUT as a student with your dream spark account you can access Pluralsight […]
Hi Jim,
I saw you had Java 8 style Lambda expressions working inside of Android Studio. I was messing with some settings to try and get this to work. In the project structure it was letting me change the language level but then it seems to change it back.
Hi John;
I’m not really using Lambda expressions. That’s just Android Studio doing code-folding to display single-method anonymous classes in Lambda expression style.
I’ve added a short blog post that talks about that feature
http://wp.me/p3hZwl-8u
Jim
Hi Jim:
I’m new to Android development and have been finding your Pluralsight courses very useful. I’m really excited about working through the material.
I’m running into issues using the course exercises. They were intended for use with Android Studio 0.3.2 and gradle 1.6. I’m currently using Android Studio 0.4.3 which requires gradle 1.9.
I’ve tried importing the projects into Android Studio and run into several issues, mostly surrounding the current vs required gradle versions.
I’ve googled extensively and found a bunch of folks with similar issues. I’ve probably spent a day or so trying to figure out a solution. Can you provide a couple of quick instructions/steps on how to do this? I would really like to use your examples to really walk through live implementations.
Thanks,
JohnB
Hi John;
The ongoing breaking changes of Android Studio have made keeping the projects current difficult. I had redone some of the projects but was then hit by another breaking change in Android Studio. Once things stabilize, I can go through a redo all of the projects.
In the meantime the easiest way to use the examples is to create a new project with the latest version of Android Studio and just add the files from the sample projects. The source should all then build just fine.
Jim
Hi Jim,
I am the Marketing Executive of Programmr ( http://www.programmr.com ) and we provide code simulators to edtech companies.
We are big fans of your online courses at Pluralsight. I was wondering if you’d like to use our code simulators in your online courses. With our code simulators you’ll be able to embed live code examples, hands-on code exercises and full-fledged code projects right into your courses.
We will be delighted to connect and discuss this further, if it interests you.
Thanks
Abhishek Raj
Marketing Executive
Programmr
http://www.programmr.com
Hi Jim,
We found this blog while trying to track down a bug in one of our apps. After reading through one of your posts we were able to solve the problem. Just dropping a note to say thanks. Even though you don’t know us 🙂 The information here has been really useful. -Ellis (from the Digital Helmet Team)
Happy to have helped Ellis … thanks for letting me know
I am Mobile developer and I have a channel on programming in Mobile in youtube. My Channel : https://www.youtube.com/revanthtrr
I have watched your tutorials on Xamarin in pluralsight and they are very useful and i liked it.
I have a question regarding the app size, if we use Xamarin. Following are the app sizes i am getting for a simple app in Xamarin.
Xamarin Forms
iOS: 8.7 MB
Android: 14 MB
Xamarin Native
iOS: 3.0 MB
Android: 3.9 MB
If i use forms the app size is very large then the Native. Is there any way to optimize the size of the app.
Hi Jim,
I’m not able to open your source code of the book “Creating Dynamic UI with Android Fragments” in Android Studio. The email address that you state in the book doesn’t work.
Where can I find help?
Kind regards
Jan
Hi Jan;
The issue is that the book was written back when Android Studio was still in beta. If you create a new project and add the source code & resource files to the project they should build fine. I’m working on a 2nd edition of the book now which will update all of the samples to work with the current version of Android Studio. I’ll be happy to send you those as I get them finished.
Thank you for the heads-up on the email address in the book not working. I recently changed email hosts and that email address didn’t get moved correctly. Its fixed now and should work fine.
Sorry for the inconvenience,
Jim
Hi Jim,
Firstly, Thanks for your Java course in Plurasight (The Java Fundamentals). I’m wondering if you are going to publish any other course related to Java to follow after that one?
Secondly,
I have a sad story with programming. I love programming but I didn’t focus on one programming language. Sometimes I want to go with Java, sometimes I want to go with C#. I know both are good choices but I don’t know why I keep changing my mind, could you give me any advice to make me focus on one of them?
why not answering my question?
downloaded the exercise files for pluralsight java fundamentals but they seem inclomplete – could you check?
Thanks Andy … I’ll take a look.
I just learned a great deal from your Java Language Fundamentals class on Pluralsight. I was surprised though by the discussion of logical operators and conditional logical operators, but no mention at all that the logical operator is also a bitwise operator. Why no mention of the bitwise functionality?