I mean to keep track of my time in this course, just to compare to what Udacity has listed. Keep in mind that I usually go more slowly and more in-depth than average, just because I feel like I learn more and learn better that way. Anyway, I have spent about three hours so far on the course, mostly because of the time necessary to download and install Android Studio.

The title to this blog post refers to the “Sunshine” app that we are building in the course and the “Hello, World!” app from which we are starting. I have successfully downloaded and installed Android Studio and created the initial app as laid out in the course.

There were a few stumbling blocks however. First of all, be certain to work from the online Google Doc as your primary reference. It is much more up-to-date than the course videos.

My biggest speed-bump was getting to the SDK Manager. You can’t get there, or at least I could not get there, from the initial install of Android Studio 0.8.0. (The SDK Manager is listed, but it is grayed out and unselectable.) It is/was necessary to update to 0.8.2.

The twist is, I had launched the update to 0.8.2 prior to trying to get into the SDK Manager, but for whatever reason the SDK Manager was not immediately available. It only mysteriously made itself available after an unmeasured amount of time after I thought Android Studio had finished upgrading.

A minor issue is that Gingerbread does not appear to be an easily selected option for minimum supported version anymore. Following the directions in the Google Doc does eventually get you around this limitation however.

Bottom line: Use the Google Doc and be patient!