Little Programing Tips

If you are building your Android applications in Android Studio or another IDE, you may come across the following error: Could not resolve all dependencies for configuration ':app:_debugApkCopy'. > Could not find any version that matches com.android.support:appcompat-v7:27.+. Versions that do not match: 26.0.0-alpha1 25.3.1 25.3.0 25.2.0 25.1.1 + 31 more Required by: project :app > Could not find any version that matches com.android.support:design:27.+. Versions that do not match: 26.0.0-alpha1 25.3.1 25.3.0 25.2.0 25.1.1 + 21 more Required by: project :whateverYourProjectAppNameIs This is happening because there has been a change that requires an update in your code. You used to be able to download the Google support files through the SDK Manager. This is the familiar place where you select all of the items that you want to add and the system will then fetch those items and add them to your setup. Google, however, has now decided that they will not provide support ...

Amazon RDS is a wonderful tool for creating databases in AWS. If you use Microsoft's SQL Server Database, you might be wondering how you can manage your database while using Amazon RDS SQL Server instances. The answer is, the same way you always have - by using SQL Server Management Studio. In fact, managing your Amazon RDS SQL Server database instance using SQL Server Management Studio is SUPER easy! Let me show you how. I am going to assume that you already have SQL Server Management Studio installed on your machine and running. Open SQL Server Management Studio. Click on Connect in the upper right hand corner of the Object Explorer. Click on Database Engine. You will be presented with the following screen . If you are using Windows Authentication in Amazon RDS, then you will switch to that Authentication method. If you are not, then select SQL Server Authentication . In this case, my Amazon RDS SQL Server instance is set to use SQL Server Authentication. . Now, go ...

We often create shortcuts to items we frequently use as we work. These shortcuts can live on the desktop, on the start menu or on the taskbar, where we most frequently use them. When you set up a command shortcut, it is often with the intent of working within a specific directory. Navigating a the structure of a directory is simple to do in a command prompt. You can use cd to get to a specific location once the command prompt is open. For example, if you are in the c:\, the following will take you to the places specified: cd windows will take you to C:\windows> cd windows\system32 C:\Windows\System32> cd.. will take you down one level to C:\Windows> cd\  will take you down to the root level This is fine, but when you initially launch the command prompt, you may not want to navigate around each and every time. There is a simple way to create a shortcut that will take you exactly where you want to go each and every time. You may also have a situation where ...

If you ever need to connect your actual device (ie. phone, wearable device or any other) to your computer to debug your Android program, you have to take a few steps first to make sure your device can be seen by the system on Windows. If you are using a Mac, you are not likely to have this issue, but if you are using a Windows system, you have some initial setup to do. Since the actual steps will be different for each device, I am going to give you a good general overview and then provide you with links to get what you need. There are a multitude of devices out there. Each of these devices operates in slightly different ways. In order to let Windows know about your device, you need drivers. In order to let Android Studio, or any IDE, know about your device, you need drivers. Here are the steps to make sure Android Studio, Visual Studio and Eclipse can see your connected device if you are creating mobile applications on a Windows machine. Enable developer mode and/or USB debugging ...

Recently, I was talking with a developer about  sudo and how they initially didn't realize what sudo was. The developer had never worked on anything other than computers running Microsoft Windows. That gave me the idea for this little programming tip on the alternative to sudo when you are using a Windows machine. First, some history. Sudo can be called the one command to rule them all when you are working on a Unix based system. In fact, it really IS the one command to rule them all on those types of systems! Sudo is pronounced "sue dough" and it stands for "super user do" or "substitute user do". It is a program that allows you to run programs with the security privileges of another user. That user, by default, is the superuser for the machine you are on - hence, the original meaning of "super user do". The sudo program was enhanced to include the ability to run commands as other special users - not only as the superuser - hence ...