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Being a native Android dev for most of my college days(yet to start a full time professional life), i often feel scared of my life choices.

Like, i chose to go into a field in which am totally on my own . Android is not a subject taught or supported by colleges, so a virtual shelter that every fresher gets, i.e that of a "he's just a college passout, he wouldn't know that" is not for me. I am supposed to be a self learner and a knowledgeable android dev by default.

Other than that , idk why i feel that am having a very specific skillset which would be harmful for me if am not the best at it.

I feel the same for entire Android dev. I mean, its nothing but a very specific hardware device with a small screen and a bunch of lmited sensors. Our tools and apps are limited to just manipulate them to do little fancy stuff offline. Other than that everything (and sometimes even this too) could be achieved by a website/webapp of a web dev.

A particular native android dev don't know how the ML/AI stuff works, don't know how backend stuff works don't know how the cloud stuff works, jeck we don't even know how those unity games work!

We are just some end product makers taking data from somewhere handled by someone and printing them in fancy gui.
(But we are good at ranting about stupid mobile hardware manufacturers, i tell u that)

So am not sure if being an Android dev is a going to be good for me in the future. I mean , a web dev always gets to interact at every level of products, but we can't.

I always feel my future will end up being limited to being good in Android, later shifting to IOS to being completely unemployed because everything is controlled by js and web dev tools and native programming is no longer a thing anymore :/

Comments
  • 6
    As long as you internalize the language fundamentals and good engineering practices, you'll find it easy to jump ship when you need to.

    There is risk to being a one trick pony though, learn some spring boot on your spare time.
  • 0
    I was a web developer and they are sometimes split into frontend / backend only as well. Similar to how you are a frontend android dev.

    But just like how frontend web devs eventually taught themselves some backend so they can freelance and sell an entire product, you should consider learning some backend as well since its basically the same.

    it certainly took me more than a few months to be able to write good frontend web applications, backend apis, and deploy both on virtual servers but being full stack is just more flexible these days.

    i was a web dev, and a year ago i changed to backend only which was the best decision i ever did. being specific is more comfortable but being full stack lets u change jobs more easily.

    so by all means i advise u to learn backend and dont consider it as spreading urself too thin.
  • 0
    @sleek backend world is so much different. From what i have gathered, There are iaas paas saas which defines the level of work one does on designing the backend. Firebase is a saas backend that i have worked with a lot.

    But i can never call myself a backend dev because firebase is limited and not everyone wants a firebase backend. Those aws instances , virtual clouds and vm/docker handling nodejs devs are hot these days and i guess i have to learn that. Plus there is something called postman that idk how or why you guys use it, but its somehow super big company and a very important tool

    I hate javascript on its mere fundamentals. Maybe i will love it once i give it another 3 years then i would be as flexible in it as am in java/android
  • 0
    @StopWastingTime
    i have coded APIs, and normal web backends using normal vanilla PHP, Laravel, CakePHP. I integrated several payment providers, auth providers, used many and no ORMs, used relational and non relational DBs, basically any combination of ways u can do a backend probably came up in a project at least once. I have been working as a full time backend dev for 2 years now. and full stack before that.

    YET i have no clue what iaas, saas or paas is. I have never used Docker nor do i know how to. I use insomnia not postman :) and both are just fancy UIs for running curls (http requests).

    The difficulty related to something u ddnt get into yet always appears hard... once u decide to do just one or two projects with their backend by urself ull find out its really easier than what ur making it out to be in ur head. at the end of the day most of backend logic is "get / add data from / to db", "send data or response msg to app as json"
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