Tell us about your experience with Windows Phone.
Windows Phone App Development is Awesome!!! The SDK is very simple and useful for developers and especially for student developers to develop apps easily. To be frank, I was not getting high grades in college, but I love technology and always wanted to achieve something. Microsoft India’s “I unlock joy” competition just gave me the right opportunity for starting up my app development. I collected all the resources needed and started developing apps, and within a month I ended up having 5 apps in the Marketplace. App development gave a great confidence in me!!! Now I’m focused on developing quality apps for Windows 8.
What inspired you to start developing?
I always wanted to be a developer and develop apps that would make life simpler…I started developing apps in September of this year and Microsoft helped by providing free dev center accounts and free development kits and tutorials for students without any charge.
Tell us about the apps that you have built.
The first app that I developed was Rajni Sound Board, which has the collection of the best dialogues and back ground music of the super star of India, Rajni Kanth. My second app that was published was Magical Mind Tracker, which tracks your mind and finds out the symbol that is in your mind! It got more than 10,000 downloads in just 1 month. My other apps are Flames, Essential Utility Kit and Amazing Facts.
Is there anything that you have had to overcome while developing?
I had many problems in developing apps…the main problem is getting all the resources needed for developing the apps. Since I do not have high speed internet connection, I use only my mobile’s 2G internet connection to connect to the internet, which is very slow. Luckily I downloaded the visual studio from one of my friends and I downloaded tutorials from the internet. My first app failed certification many times because of some problems, however I continued to learn from my mistakes and corrected them and got it certified. Whenever I had a problem I searched online for help from Stack Overflow or any other forums that help developers (I like this resource to help you develop Windows Phone apps also).
Do you have any advice for your fellow students?
One should have determination to develop apps. If you love whatever you do, you will surely succeed in it. The first step is getting an idea for the app, then, go through this helpful tutorial from Channel 9
(this is for 4 days and at the end of each day there is an assignment - try to do it without skipping), then publish your app in the Marketplace. If any problem occurs in any part of the app just go online where there are so many developers who will help you.
For more info feel free to contact me on Facebook or Twitter…I will try to help you. You can check out all of my apps here.