LAURENCE MORONEY: Welcome to the Googleplex.
This is an incredible place with lots of great stuff being
worked on every single day.
Before I worked here, I always wondered
what it'd be like to come to the Googleplex,
meet up with a Googler, and have coffee with them,
and just chat about what they do, how they do it,
and why they do it.
And today we're going to do exactly that.
Hi everybody, and welcome to this episode of "Coffee
with a Googler."
Today we're outdoors in these lovely gardens
beside the coffee lab on Google's campus.
And I'm meeting with Katherine Kuan who's
an application developer extraordinaire who's done
some fabulous stuff at Google.
And she's going to tell us all about it.
Hey, Katherine.
How are you?
KATHERINE KUAN: Good, Laurence.
How are you?
LAURENCE MORONEY: Doing good.
So tell us all about it.
I hear you've built a lot of cool apps
that a lot of the viewers have probably used already.
KATHERINE KUAN: Sure.
So I worked on the Android apps team here at Google.
LAURENCE MORONEY: OK.
KATHERINE KUAN: And I've worked on apps
like Google Play, Google Keep, and the Contacts app.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Google Keep is one of my favorites.
KATHERINE KUAN: Oh, really?
LAURENCE MORONEY: Nice, yes.
KATHERINE KUAN: That's awesome.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Cool.
So now you're moving on from being
a person who builds all this wide diversity of apps
to somebody who's helping new developers learn about them.
So tell us about that.
KATHERINE KUAN: Yeah.
When I was on the Android apps team,
we had so many great resources here.
Really great engineers and designers and product managers.
And they kind of helped me build a good understanding of what it
means to build a good product.
And I wanted to share that type of information
with people out in the public.
Because sometimes, building for Android
can be a little bit intimidating.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Yes, it can.
KATHERINE KUAN: There's so many resources out there.
And you just don't know where to start
or what's important or not.
That's why I've been so excited to work on these Udacity
courses.
Because I feel like it's a chance
to provide people with a linear flow of how to start
building an Android app.
So we kind of guide you along the path
of what are the important components
that you need in your app, whether it is building a UI
or building a database, or a content provider,
or a sync adapter.
We guide you through building the Sunshine app, which
is like a canonical example app that
has a list of data and a detail page,
and it also works on tablets, as well.
So we kind of teach all these fundamental concepts
in a story, almost.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So the fundamentals course was great.
I took it myself.
It was a great refresher.
And I've done Java on and off for years,
but it was really good to sit down and see
some of the great Java techniques
that you can use for building Android applications.
And actually, finally, make sense out of them,
which is great.
But I was wondering as I was doing it, though,
what about somebody who hasn't done Java before?
Or somebody who is a newcomer to mobile development?
How do we get them on ramp so that then they
can enjoy the goodness that was in your fundamentals course?
KATHERINE KUAN: Yeah, absolutely.
So in Android fundamentals course,
we kind of breezed through some of the concepts
like hitting a server or using SQL for databases.
And so we want to-- we're creating a precursor
to Android fundamentals now.
And this is a new course.
It's called Intro to Android now.
It might change.
But essentially, we're taking people from the beginning.
So someone who's never written any lines of code,
we're going to teach them XML from the beginning.
We're going to teach them Java concepts,
event-driven programming.
And just create like a couple of really simple apps,
just to give people the feeling of what
it is like to create something from scratch.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Cool.
And then they'll be prepared to then go
into the really, really cool stuff that's from fundamentals.
KATHERINE KUAN: They have to practice a little more
on their own.
But hopefully they'll see from this intro course
whether this is right for them or not.
Because computer science can have a lot of misconceptions
to people.
People think that developers just sit in a corner
all by themselves working.
Or that-- Yeah, exactly.
And so we want to show people that building Android
apps is really to help improve other people's lives.
LAURENCE MORONEY: I mean, one of the things about how
Udacity courses work, and you're building these through Udacity,
they're a little different, right?
It's not just like you're sitting watching
a video of somebody talking.
There's a lot of interaction involved.
And there's a lot of app building
that the person has to do.
Could you explain a little bit of the process behind that?
KATHERINE KUAN: It's a series of videos and interactive quizzes.
So we are-- in the Android fundamentals course,
we're guiding them through building a weather app.
And so there will be videos of me or my two co-instructors.
And we'll teach in a style that we call just-in-time learning.
So say they need to build the list page.
We'll build up parts of it at a time
and then as concepts arise that they don't know,
we'll just do a short lecture on that.
And then to test their knowledge,
we'll have an interactive quiz.
So you can-- it's a multiple choice answer,
or maybe it's a little coding task
that they have to do on the side in Android Studio.
And then we reengage them and then go to the next concept
and so on.
LAURENCE MORONEY: I see.
And then you also make the source code available, right?
So if they do get stuck, they can download the source code
for that section.
And then they could learn from that.
So they're prepared for the next section.
KATHERINE KUAN: Yes.
All the code is available in GitHub.
And we've split it up based on this code checkpoints
parts of the course so that people can follow along.
And another really great thing that we've been rolling out
recently is this thing called Android Fundamentals Study
Jams.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Yes.
I attended one.
KATHERINE KUAN: Oh, really?
LAURENCE MORONEY: I went to one in Dublin a couple weeks ago.
KATHERINE KUAN: Oh, really?
How was it?
LAURENCE MORONEY: It was actually really, really cool.
I didn't realize you were doing that.
But I love the concept of it.
But explain it for everybody hasn't been lucky to go to one
like I have.
KATHERINE KUAN: Yes.
For the Android Fundamentals Study Jams,
basically we're partnering with a lot of the Google Developer
groups around the world.
And there's leaders in each of these groups
who have taken the Android Fundamentals course
or have already learned Android development on their own.
And now they're leading a classroom
of students who are going to take the Udacity course online.
But every week after they finish one course,
they come together and meet and talk about problems
that they had and work through things together.
And then by the end of meeting maybe seven times
or so, they're going to start working
on their final projects.
I think it's so important for people
to not learn purely through online, like at home.
Because when you get stuck, you don't know what to do.
So I think that community aspect and having these local leaders
teach Android development will really round out
people's experience to help them get ramped up on creating apps.
LAURENCE MORONEY: And I notice one
the themes that you're bringing up a lot,
and what's important for you personally, I can see,
is how people learn is social.
By having a social impact.
So when learning is like working with other people
rather than working as an island.
But also, I understand that you have an encouragement
for people who are building the apps
that they have to build as part of course
to do something social.
Can you share a little of that?
KATHERINE KUAN: Sure.
The power of mobile, I think, is connecting people
to the right information at the right time.
And so I feel like a lot of challenges
that we have in society today, people
might not have access to basic resources of life
like food, water, shelter.
Things like that.
But if we can use mobile phones to connect them
to that information, then they can get access to those things.
I think that blows my mind, how powerful that is.
And I really want our developers to see
the power of what Android can provide as a platform,
but also to identify those problems
and kind of marry those together to create a solution that
works well for people.
LAURENCE MORONEY: OK.
So the Android Fundamentals course
is available now for people to get started.
And your upcoming course to help newcomers ramp up
to get the skills for that is coming soon.
So sometime this year?
KATHERINE KUAN: Yes.
LAURENCE MORONEY: OK, cool.
And it'll be available on Udacity's course.
And they're also available free of charge, right?
KATHERINE KUAN: Yes.
LAURENCE MORONEY: One of the things
that people always ask about with Udacity services--
and I went to the Study Jam and I got the question a lot,
was that, is it really free?
Because it just seems to be a paid link.
Could you tell us what's the difference?
And what do they get for free?
KATHERINE KUAN: For free, you can access all the course
materials that the other co-instructors and I have
created, like videos, quizzes, and the code.
And then if you want additional help,
you can sign up for the paid experience,
where you would get one on one tutoring
with someone from Udacity.
And then you also get a verified certificate at the end of it.
So it really just depends on what learning environment
is best for you.
LAURENCE MORONEY: But anybody who wants to learn the beginner
stuff and wants to learn the fundamental stuff,
they can learn it all, they can build the apps
without paying a dime.
KATHERINE KUAN: Absolutely.
LAURENCE MORONEY: OK.
Cool.
Thanks, Katherine, for being here.
And thanks everybody for watching this far.
And if you want to learn more about the courses
that Katherine has been working on
and other courses for Android, go take a look
at the Udacity.com site.
As Katherine explained, it's totally free.
The Fundamentals course is really cool.
And you can join about 200,000 other students
who have done it.
Or maybe even join a Study Jam in your local area.
I attended the one in Dublin a couple weeks ago,
just the first one, unfortunately.
And it was really wonderful.
And I strongly recommend everybody to do so.
So with that, I just want to thank very much Katherine
for being here today.
KATHERINE KUAN: Thank you, Laurence.
LAURENCE MORONEY: I've learned so much from you.
Thank you so much.
KATHERINE KUAN: Yeah.
It was really great catching up.