My Journey as a teen Android Dev

Hey, I’m Caleb, a 17 year old student and proficient Android Developer. In this article I want to tell you about my coding trip and how I was able to join an amazing startup in Berlin at the age of 16.

I began coding at the age of 10 when I visited a book shop named Thalia. The book shop was very close to my home and I visited it very frequently. At one point I got bored of the comics and mangas I was reading there that I explored the shop in further detail. On the very same day I got confronted for the first time with programming languages. The book that intrigued me the most was a large, formal Python introduction book that I read every time I visited that shop. Finally, on my 11th birthday the book was gifted to me by my parents and I enjoyed coding in Python. At one point, at the age of 13 I wanted to pause my career in Python, HTML and CSS and continue on a different path: Mobile Development. I decided to develop Android apps and started a coding course on Treehouse that aided me in understanding the syntax of Java and structure of the Android system. Soon after watching and studying for approximately 100 hours on Treehouse, I was ready to walk on my own feet and begin my own projects. At the beginning of my Android career I developed simple but fun Android apps such as a game called “Click” which I marketed on the known British Magazine The week Junior. Soon after my app appeared in that magazine, I gained 40 downloads and many nice reviews. During my coding career I also took part in lots of different hacking events such as “Jugendhackt”(min. 7 times) and “Code und Design” (1.). I also won one of the main prices at the Ideenflug competition(creator: Airbus) endowed with 1000€. With that money I bought myself a 3D printer and a new Macbook to invest in my future. At the age of 14, I created lots of fun projects at @FabLabBerlin(Maker space) and at the age of 15 I took a mandatory two week internship @3pc. At 3pc, a software development company, I quickly gained more knowledge about Android and left the company with an updated mindset about Technologie, Android Development(Fragments, Activities,SDK) and Teamwork. At the age of 16 I took 6 months to develop a social climbing app called uClimb(Google playstore). While uClimb wasn’t a major achievement in downloads I still learned incredibly much during the development of that app, such as Threading, Retrofit, Volley, Firebase(Server) and Java in general. At long last I send an application to an interesting Android Launcher company named Blloc which to my surprise saw my potential and accepted me into their team. Becoming a developer at a startup such as Blloc was a dream come true. Multiple times during the following months I had to get back to my senses and recognise that I’m extremely fortunate to be able to be at a startup as amazing as this one. The team was incredibly nice and the experience was immaculate. While I was developing at that company I had a moment where my brain suddenly changed its perspective on coding and functioned in a more efficient way. I left the company soon after I became 17 and visited another startup as an intern for 2 months. There I was taught a lot about the SOLID principle, Gitlab and developing an app from scratch to production. All in all, I had a pretty smooth journey that I enjoyed very much. Coding enhanced my understanding of teamwork and my ability to solve problems. Thank you very much for reading this article.