So coming from a basic programming background, I knew html, css, PHP and Java, one day I figured hey I'm going to turn my website into an app. I found this forum and everybody said to take the Android Basics with Compose course by google. I did the course, it took me about two months of coding like 4+ hours a day to get through it, but I finally felt I was ready.

I took the Amphibians app from the course as my starter template and started building stuff. My first goal was just to connect to an API I made in php, and get the app to display some images in a lazylist. Took me a couple days but I got that working, and the rest was history.

I just kept googling and asking chatgpt what to do in certain situations. Now I have MVVM architecture, DI, retrofit, coil, coroutines, google maps integration, JWT token login system, repositories, stored user preferences, dark mode, language translations, and a bunch of other nonsense setup. All in all my app is over 20 screens and took me two months to build. It's a social media app, so it required me to build an SQL database and many different APIs.

Since my app was finished, now came the daunting task of trying to get it on the Google Play store. I was woefully unprepared and had to spend about two weeks adapting everything to the rules and guidelines that they have. Especially regarding permissions, user generated content, and abiding by policies. Not to mention building screenshots, splash logos, monochrome icons, etc. I finally got everything coded and submitted my app for Closed Testing.

Just to get to closed testing you have to build the .aab signed bundle, and generate debug files yadda yadda yadda. Basically wade through a bunch of google play warnings and try to figure out what their bots want. Once I got the app up, it immediately got hit by tons of google bots, testing all the features of my app. I was getting all kinds of email notifications for 'user activities' since my app has some email connectivity.

Then about after a week of worrying, the app was out of review and up on Google Play for my limited group of testers. No message from Google about anything that I needed to rectify. My account had been grandfathered in since I published a friend's app like ten years ago, so I didn't have to suffer through all of that 14 days of 20 testers thing some people are facing.

After a brief test of a couple days, and making sure the app didn't crash on various devices, I Promoted the app to Production. Now it is live on the store and looks awesome! Time to do some marketing and hopefully build a user base :)

I just wanted to share my story with you guys, as I was one of those people before that saw this entire process as scary and fraught with potholes. But if you try to do everything the right way, it should all work out just fine. Just follow the rules and be diligent with your decision making, and take google's recommendations seriously. Best of luck to you all on your app making journeys!