I used to read code from popular open source projects to see how others implement certain functionalities and also to learn from them. (I am a firm believer of the fact that you have to read good code to write good code)

Recently I have been following up a couple of good open source Android apps and thought of listing them here so that it could be useful for others.

1. 10 Open Source Android Apps Which Every Developer Must Look Into ~> http://sudarmuthu.com/blog/10-open-source-android-apps-which-every-android-developer-must-look-into/

2. 15 Sample Apps For Android Beginners ~> https://code.google.com/p/apps-for-android/

3. 14 Great Android Apps With Source Code ~> http://blog.interstellr.com/post/39321551640/14-great-android-apps-that-are-also-open-source

Step one: the idea

This bit's really important: you need to work out very quickly whether or not your idea is rubbish. Find out if it already exists. Be very clear about who will use your app, other than you – ask people if they would find it useful. Generally speaking, successful apps are either a) really fun, like Angry Birds, or b) solve a problem, like Summly, which makes mobile-friendly summaries of news stories. If your app does neither, be concerned.

Step two: the spec

Speak to someone who has built an app before, or knows how the process works. You need to quickly understand how easy your app is to make. If it involves complex 3D-augmented reality scratch'n'sniff (or similar), you're entering a world of pain, and will probably have to mortgage your children to even get a working demo together. If, however, it's relatively simple, you're on the right path. Proceed.

Step three: the money

Most startups kick off with "friends and family" funding – a mini pot of cash raised in return for small equity. If you can spin a good yarn and a shiny video, a Kickstarter campaign might help you to raise funds. Many hopefuls think cutting a developer into the company will solve all of their cash problems, but they forget a very simple rule: 10% of a thing that doesn't exist yet is worth precisely zero. As for big money, it's almost unheard of for bona fide investors – venture capitalists or "angel" funders – to invest in anything before, at the very least, seeing a proof of concept.

Step four: the build

This is the really tricky bit. Generations of rubbish IT teaching in the UK has created a skills vortex: developers – the computer engineers who actually make the apps – are in short supply and huge demand, and can comfortably charge up to a £1,000 a day for their work. And you need a specific type of developer: one who knows Objective-C, the default programming language for iOS (Apple's operating system), or Java, the language-of-choice for Android apps.

The alternative, increasingly popular route is to make it yourself. A growing range of online and real-world code academies can teach you: look up General Assembly, Steer, or Code Academy. This option has a distinct edge: if your app fails, which it probably will, you'll still have the skills to make your next one.

Step five: the marketing

If possible, be 17 years old. This helps to create attention-grabbing headlines, such as: "The new Mark Zuckerberg", "Wunderkind Geek", and "Teenage Prodigy". Failing that the usual tricks pay off: bombarding the press and Twitter, teaser videos explaining how your app will change the world, incentivising sign up. But ultimately, the success of your app will fall back to the first principles: whether or not it's fun or useful.

How To Become A Mobile App Millionaire ~> http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/shortcuts/2013/mar/26/how-to-become-an-app-millionaire

1. Business Adventures, by John Brooks.

Warren Buffett recommended this book to me back in 1991, and it’s still the best business book I’ve ever read. Even though Brooks wrote more than four decades ago, he offers sharp insights into timeless fundamentals of business, like the challenge of building a large organization, hiring people with the right skills, and listening to customers’ feedback. He is also a masterful storyteller, peppering his articles with compelling portraits of everyone from General Electric executives to the founder of Piggly Wiggly groceries. His article on the fate of the Ford Motor Company’s Edsel is a classic. Business Adventures is out of print in hardcover and paperback (not true, after a recommendation from Gates they ran another print, which is due out in Sept.), but you can now buy it in e-book form. And you can download chapter 5, “Xerox Xerox Xerox Xerox,” free. I wish all business writing were half as good.

2. Stress Test, by Timothy F. Geithner.

The central irony of Stress Test is that a guy who was accused of being a lousy communicator as U.S. Treasury Secretary has penned a book that is such a good read. Geithner paints a compelling human portrait of what it was like to be fighting a global financial meltdown while at the same time fighting critics inside and outside the Administration as well as his own severe guilt over his near-total absence from his family. The politics of fighting financial crises will always be ugly. But it helps if the public knows a little more about the subject—what’s at stake, what the options are, what has worked in similar situations—so that the loud talkers resonate a bit less and the knowledgeable ones a bit more. …

3. The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism, by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

I read a lot about Teddy Roosevelt last year, around the time Melinda and I took our kids to the Panama Canal. He was instrumental in getting the canal built, and I’d assumed it was the highlight of his career. But it wasn’t. It’s a testament to the breadth and depth of Roosevelt’s accomplishments that the canal warrants only a handful of mentions in this biography. There’s just too much other fascinating material competing for space, from Roosevelt’s relationship with the press and his friendship with William Howard Taft (who was brilliant in his own right) to his efforts to fight corruption and reform the political system.

I’m especially interested in the central question that Goodwin raises: How does social change happen? Can it be driven by a single inspirational leader, or do other factors have to lay the groundwork first? Sometimes a single leader can make a big difference: In the field of global health, Jim Grant almost singlehandedly created a global constituency for children, sparking a movement to double vaccination rates and save millions of lives. But Roosevelt’s case was different. Although he tried to push through a number of political reforms earlier in his career, he wasn’t really successful until journalists at McClure’s and other publications had rallied public support for change.

I loved Goodwin’s Team of Rivals and highly recommend this one too.

4. The Rosie Project: A Novel, by Graeme Simsion.

Melinda picked up this novel earlier this year, and she loved it so much that she kept stopping to read passages to me. I started it myself at 11 p.m. one Saturday and stayed up with it until 3 the next morning. Anyone who occasionally gets overly logical will identify with the hero, a genetics professor with Asperger’s Syndrome who goes looking for a wife. (Melinda thought I would appreciate the parts where he’s a little too obsessed with optimizing his schedule. She was right.) It’s a funny and profound book about being comfortable with who you are and what you’re good at. I’m sending copies to several friends and hope to re-read it later this year. It is one of the most enjoyable novels I’ve read in a long time.

5. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, by Elizabeth Kolbert.

Climate change is a big problem—one of the biggest we’ll face this century—but it’s not the only environmental concern on the horizon. Humans are putting down massive amounts of pavement, moving species around the planet, over-fishing and acidifying the oceans, changing the chemical composition of rivers, and more. Natural scientists posit that there have been five extinction events in the Earth’s history (think of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs), and Kolbert makes a compelling case that human activity is leading to the sixth. Unlike a lot of people who write about the environment, Kolbert doesn’t resort to hype. She just lays out the facts and wraps them in memorable anecdotes. It’s a sobering but engaging and informative read.

6. Reinventing American Health Care: How the Affordable Care Act Will Improve Our Terribly Complex, Blatantly Unjust, Outrageously Expensive, Grossly Inefficient, Error Prone System, by Ezekiel J. Emanuel.

One of the architects of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) makes the case for why the U.S. health care system needed reform and how Obamacare sets out to fix the problems. Although he was deeply involved in its creation, Emanuel is good about making it clear when he’s educating you about the history of health care and when he’s advocating for his ideas. He calls out a few things he disagreed with in Obamacare, like the creation of a separate health-insurance exchange for small businesses. And unlike a lot of experts, he’s willing to make predictions about how health care will change in the coming years. …

And Gates also included a video explaining the reads

Link ~> http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2014/07/bill-gates-books-to-read-summer/

A Closed Version With BuddyDrive & BuddyPress ~> http://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/create-a-dropbox-clone-with-buddypress-and-buddydrive/
An Open Source Version ~> http://fak3r.com/2009/09/14/howto-build-your-own-open-source-dropbox-clone/

In this tutorial we will be creating a simple web-based chat application with PHP and jQuery. This sort of utility would be perfect for a live support system for your website.

http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-create-a-simple-web-based-chat-application--net-5931

Mr. Seun Osewa, I really pray and hope that you are looking at this thread sir. I really believe that you can be the Mr. Zuckerberg of Africa that we can all look up to and point to like a hero. Just please continue to do your best and leave God the rest. I really want to see you and others who have made meaninful apps in Africa make it, than others wasting our time. But understand sir, please understand Mr. Seun that competition is everywhere. Please never slack. Always step up your game. I think that by now, you should be on Forbes' list of Millionaires, if not Billionaires.

blueyedgeek: Now, let's get started. Learning JavaScript: Resources to get started

If you are just getting started with JavaScript, you might get confused on where to start and how to start but before getting started, here are a few things to take note of.

* Try to understand what you are learning. Javascript is used to script the behaviour of web pages and it is no way related to the Java programming language, original name was Livescript but was changed to be similar to the then hot Java programming language additionally, it is a full fledged programming language.

* You may have heard about the popular JavaScript library, jQuery but note that jQuery is not a replacement for JavaScript. In fact jQuery just contains a bunch of pre written JavaScript functions to make your coding life easier but you still need to understand Javascript in order to use it properly. In fact, if you become a JavaScript ninja, you could decide to build your own library just for kicks

- Dhtml 1423

* Now, to really get started, there are many easy way to get started learning JavaScript and to be honest, things have become much easier for us in this generation. There are many online schools springing up left right and center just waiting to tutor you on the latest technologies so that you can become a coding ninja. If you haven't had a taste of JavaScript before then you can familiarize yourself by reading through our very own Dhtml's tutorial on the subject (although it has been discontinued but not to worry).

-- here are a few online schools to learn Javascript for free

++ Codecademy: their tagline says it all, "learn to code interactively for free". Just sign up and get coding. Trust me, you'll love it but don't over depend on codecademy for all your needs because it somehow gives you a false sense of accomplishment when you are being spoon fed through out but it's still a good place to start.

++ Learnstreet: Learnstreet is another good place to get started, theirs is a bit similar to codecademy, you write code right there in your browser in the online console and it also comes packed with many different exercises and video tutorials.

* Get a good book and start reading. Unfortunately, I don't have any favorite as recommendations as I just read reviews and download the e-book version but if you still don't know which good book to start with then I will recommend a few:

-- Javascript: the definitive guide: okay, I admit, I only opened this book once and then run away because of the information within. Trust me this book contains a bible's worth of information and I'm just listing it because it is a good book that can be used as reference even when you become a coding ninja.

-- Head First JavaScript programming: Now this is more of a beginners book, this book has a unique way of teaching you how to code and then making sure you actually understand what you are reading. It also comes with fun exercises that you can try out yourself to make sure you have a proper grasp on things.

-- Head First HTML 5 programming: forget the fancy name, this is really a JavaScript book that introduces and teaches you how t use the latest Html 5 features to your greatest advantage while teaching you valuable Javascript at the same time. It's win - win for you.

-- JavaScript and jQuery: the missing manual: Like the name, this book is the manual that should have come with Javascript. The book does a fine job of introducing you to the basic concepts of Javascript before moving on to teaching you how to use the most popular Javascript library, jQuery to build web apps. NOTE: make sure you have a proper understanding of Javascript before disturbing yourself with any library

If there are other good books, please mention them in your comments.

* Get yourself familiarized with the browser console because this is where you will be debugging your codes while learning. You should also get the firebug extension for browsers. It is lightweight but very powerful.

* For editing your codes, a text editor would do just fine additionally, you can get the Jseditor created by our very own Dhtml.

* Read more books and practice like your life depended on it

* Finally, Build something. It doesn't matter how small or how big, just build something that you can be proud of. Learn to always push yourself and try to do those things that scare you the most.

* After this, you can move on to learning a library of your choice. It's not always a good thing to reinvent the wheel, raw Javascript is great and all that but there are still a lot of cross browser incompatibilities what with your codes behaving differently in different browsers or not working all together, this is where libraries come in to handle all the wahala for you so that you can focus on the important thing building awesome web apps

Note that apart from jQuery, there are still other libraries that offer the same functionalities but I don't think you will be needing all of them, just stick with the one that is most convenient for you. When you head don come dey hot, you can add more to your skillset.

Also note that Javascript can be used for server side programming as well so you might not need to learn additional languages once you master Javascript. That's all for now folks.

Let's get coding!!

Another challenge/study group going nowhere. Lets make JS apps that will make us money instead of making inept n rigged challenges and study groups on this forum. That will definitely help out the poor that is really in need than those who have money and want to hide info and money to themselves.

1. An app that will teach people JS.
2. An app that display your code in real-time devices
3. An app that will convert HTML/JS into other languages like Java & C++.

asalimpo:

boy!! Are u kiddg me! Suprise emogi.
Larry p and sergy were slinging code in diapers. Google was just a phd thesis idea. They *read my lips* coded the first implementation, hand rigged a super computer from off the shelf components to test their ideas.

Zuckerboy, was codg since 14..
He was earng side money from programmg gigs and microsoft wanted to hire him b4 he strted @ harvard 4 a program he wrote - synaptic ....

Dont say this in public oh. They'll deport you and you'll lose job opportunities.
Infact evry1 sayg they want to know how to program should be conversant with d history of their tools, leadg tech companies and tech icons. . Dnt just learn how to "code" . Broaden ya scope.

Obviously u didnt take the time to analyze what I was saying, so Ima 4give 4 u this. Unlike DharkPoet n blueeyedgeek, u've been posting reasonable well in other threads, so Ima let u slide.

DharkPoet:

1) So we can't have black founders? That to me sounds racist, even though I know there are brothers still out there in the tech sphere making it big.

2) I think it boils down to passion, enthusiasm, age needn't be a barrier. You get a laptop at 12, you get it at 24, doing what you love with it matters.

3) Yup, they did, and I believe it gave them an edge, in fact your number 2 and 3 points, gave them a good edge, but should that make us discouraged? Hell, no!!

Most of us here are self taught, staying late nights, trying to salvage the little fraction of the day after hectic lectures to download tutorials. How else do we test our skills other than networks such as this.
The money shouldn't be a priority, I believe it's going to be as a result of adequate skill set

Nothing is racist just stating facts. What u need to do is check on the racism in Silicon Valley. Better yet check the white male priviledge in technology.

Text Tutorial ~> http://readwrite.com/2007/05/10/how_to_build_an_open_source_google
Video Tutorial ~>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_u-ClYsgdI

blueyedgeek: Passion and greed ke? you are very funny.
Okay, lead the way and we'll follow. What I mean is that instead of talking about it all of the time, why not start something and then we'll all join in?

I just did. An App Challenge for ways in which technology can help our society.

engrjidex:

(1). Good Ideas, but we can't keep Guessing like Gamblers.
(2). Lets see your Port-folio.

(3). So you don't even pray for Peace in our 9ja

**I'm sorry if i sound RUDE o.**
i rest my case

No, u don't sound rude. Pretty on point.

Most of you (who had used Rails) should be aware of the Ruby on Rails Tutorial: Learn Rails by Example twitter clone app. I spent some 15 days completing module by module and learn Rails. Later on i developed my own app that suited my need. But i always cherish the power of Rails, it makes you get things done in very small amount of time. I wanted to have a web dev Hackathon(though it din happen) and see how many apps people could develop in very small amount of time. I wanted this to boast! show off the faster development time of Rails

Let me check my speed (I am writing this side by side)

Now I am going to try my best to develop an app as fast i can. Hmm, I need an idea! Let me try a Facebook clone app.

Read the rest ~> http://vysakh.quora.com/Making-a-Facebook-clone-using-Rails-in-minimum-time

blueyedgeek: One thing you keep missing. These guys didn't do the things they did for the money, they had real passion for it. Money just happened to come their way and I'm pretty sure that if the money didn't come, they would have continued plugging away because they have love for their craft. no come here dey corrupt our minds with money.

Like you said. "THESE GUYS DIDN'T DO THE THINGS FOR THE MONEY", that's because they already HAD IT. WE DONT. So we can't think like them. We must have passion and greed.

DharkPoet:

My question is, how do we acquire the skills necessary to accomplish the Nairaland challenges and build apps, by lifting codes?

Which leads to my question, will these NL challenges and apps (already posted) make us money? I think a better question is, How do we acquire the skills neccesary to make money, by lifting codes? Which leads to my answer ~> You make clones of apps that already making money on the market. There are many tutorials that show a step-by-step for how to build the most popular apps. We can never learn everything.

DharkPoet:

I guess Zuckerberg, Gates, Jobs, Sergey and Larry all went for the money hunt without even thinking about acquiring and perfecting the necessary skills.
.

Yeah but Zuckerberg, Gates, Jobs, Sergey & Larry have 3 things in common, which you, I and many on Nairaland don't.

1. They are nonblack founders or better yet they are white men
2. Their parents came from the middle-income family who have enough money to get them a computer or a laptop at a very young age (like 12)
3. They went to top universities in USA, like Harvard, Stanford or Yale.

So thus we can't think like them.

DharkPoet:

Computer Science PhD students, if going by your fact, that they "were not experienced in HTML", does that invariably support your claim that "they didn't really know how to program"?

Alright, what happens after targeting the markets? How do we achieve the required skills? I think that's the primary reason for the "study group".

When we target markets, and to finally decide to make money off of the futile study groups and challenges on NairaLand, by selling apps, then we can use that money to buy more time by paying bills, which in then will give us more time to learn programming without pressure.

Or how do u feel sir?

Of course you can. What do u have, so we can direct you to what you really want.

DharkPoet: Here are some examples to keep us busy:
Find PI to the Nth Digit - Enter a number and
have the program generate PI up to that many
decimal places. Keep a limit to how far the
program will go.

Fibonacci Sequence - Enter a number and have
the program generate the Fibonacci sequence to
that number or to the Nth number.

Prime Factorization - Have the user enter a
number and find all Prime Factors (if there are
any) and display them.

Next Prime Number - Have the program find
prime numbers until the user chooses to stop
asking for the next one.

Find Cost of Tile to Cover W x H Floor -
Calculate the total cost of tile it would take to
cover a floor plan of width and height, using a
cost entered by the user.

Mortgage Calculator - Calculate the monthly
payments of a fixed term mortgage over given
Nth terms at a given interest rate. Also figure
out how long it will take the user to pay back the
loan.

Change Return Program - The user enters a cost
and then the amount of money given. The
program will figure out the change and the
number of quarters, dimes, nickels, pennies
needed for the change.

Binary to Decimal and Back Converter - Develop
a converter to convert a decimal number to
binary or a binary number to its decimal
equivalent.

Calculator - A simple calculator to do basic
operators. Make it a scientific calculator for
added complexity.

Unit Converter (temp, currency, volume, mass
and more) - Converts various units between one
another. The user enters the type of unit being
entered, the type of unit they want to convert to
and then the value. The program will then make
the conversion.

Credit Card Validator - Takes in a credit card
number from a common credit card vendor (Visa,
MasterCard, American Express, Discoverer) and
validates it to make sure that it is a valid number
(look into how credit cards use a checksum).

Tax Calculator - Asks the user to enter a cost
and either a country or state tax. It then returns
the tax plus the total cost with tax.

Factorial Finder - The Factorial of a positive
integer, n, is defined as the product of the
sequence n, n-1, n-2, ...1 and the factorial of
zero, 0, is defined as being 1. Solve this using
both loops and recursion.

Complex Number Algebra - Show addition,
multiplication, negation, and inversion of complex
numbers in separate functions. (Subtraction and
division operations can be made with pairs of
these operations.) Print the results for each
operation tested.

Happy Numbers - A happy number is defined by
the following process. Starting with any positive
integer, replace the number by the sum of the
squares of its digits, and repeat the process until
the number equals 1 (where it will stay), or it
loops endlessly in a cycle which does not include
1. Those numbers for which this process ends in
1 are happy numbers, while those that do not
end in 1 are unhappy numbers. Display an
example of your output here. Find first 8 happy
numbers.

Number Names - Show how to spell out a
number in English. You can use a preexisting
implementation or roll your own, but you should
support inputs up to at least one million (or the
maximum value of your language's default
bounded integer type, if that's less). Optional:
Support for inputs other than positive integers (like
zero, negative integers, and floating-point
numbers).

Coin Flip Simulation - Write some code that
simulates flipping a single coin however many
times the user decides. The code should record
the outcomes and count the number of tails and
heads.

Reverse a String - Enter a string and the program
will reverse it and print it out.

Pig Latin - Pig Latin is a game of alterations
played on the English language game. To create
the Pig Latin form of an English word the initial
consonant sound is transposed to the end of the
word and an ay is affixed (Ex.: "banana" would
yield anana-bay). Read Wikipedia for more
information on rules.

Count Vowels - Enter a string and the program
counts the number of vowels in the text. For
added complexity have it report a sum of each
vowel found.

Check if Palindrome - Checks if the string
entered by the user is a palindrome. That is that
it reads the same forwards as backwards like
“racecar”.

Nice ideas, but keeping busy doesnt mean that you will be making money. Does keeping busy pay the bills? What if we could turn these ideas into reasonable apps that can make us money?

DharkPoet:

Seriously? Sergey Brin and Larry Page didn't really know how to program well before they kickstarted Google? I don't agree with that Bro.

In as much as the enthusiasm to make money should be there, we shouldn't make it a priority over the passion for the language. Yes, the money would come, but not at the cost of fully understanding the implementations and intricacies involved.

Danke!!

When will the money come? I think we have to be aggressive.

They were Comp Sci PHD students who were not experienced in HTML, thats the main reason why their original homepage has a simple design. But to get back on topic, how much is the challenge? What market should we be targeting for apps instead of just wasting time forming study groups and having competitions that won't bring us money?

City - Lagos
Programming Language - Java, C, C++ & Python. A little of HTML & CSS.

blueyedgeek: Right


Before we can start making "real" apps, we need to really understand what we are really doing before we become copy-pasters that just lift code without understanding what it does.

- dhtml 1801

Personally, I think we need the money b4 we pay a whole alot of time to start understanding code. We can copy and paste for a while and then we go back to see what it is about. When Google started, they didnt really know how to program well, but they got better as time went by. Facebook got better as well. I think we should get the money 1st and then focus on understanding code.

Green/Solar Electricity App?

1. Healthcare
2. Education
3. Etc.....

Also @asalimpo, I understand that many 9ja's dont support startups b4 they become big, but that is everyhwere but if u check the internet there are many dumb business ideas that made it big. U can even see their stories. Like Google, Facebook, SnapChat, Twitter. of all things Twitter and many more.

I understand that u suppose 2 crawl b4 we walk n walk b4 running, but I think its time we stepped up our game. Im totally down with this, I just think that at the end of the day the main point of these challenges, competitions and study groups is to learn and practice right? So why not learn by making a real app that can help our society and give us money. Like experience is the best teacher. What if we did these challenges, competitions and study groups in order to make a real app like:

a. An app that can predict when NEPA will turn the light off or bring it on
b. An app that can predict what Naija streets will have the most traffic, the best route to take and where to go from there
c. An app that can predict where next crime or violence or Boko Haram attacks will be.

Or how do u feel?

Like lets team up to build apps that not only will add value to our society, but will also give us money and recognition.

We could also make a Facebook or Twitter or Google clone and then try to sell it. Pata pata, people will say they are not interested, but either way, we would have learn something. Or how does everyone feel?

Not 2 spam or repeat myself in this post ~> https://www.nairaland.com/1793070/programming-challenge-beginners-n20000/4#24706681 .Im totally down with this, I just think that at the end of the day the main point of these challenges, competitions and study groups is to learn and practice right? So why not learn by making a real app that can help our society and give us money. Like experience is the best teacher. What if we did these challenges, competitions and study groups in order to make a real app like:

a. An app that can predict when NEPA will turn the light off or bring it on
b. An app that can predict what Naija streets will have the most traffic, the best route to take and where to go from there
c. An app that can predict where next crime or violence or Boko Haram attacks will be.

Or how do u feel?

Like lets team up to build apps that not only will add value to our society, but will also give us money and recognition.

We could also make a Facebook or Twitter or Google clone and then try to sell it. Pata pata, people will say they are not interested, but either way, we would have learn something. Or how does everyone feel?

asalimpo: Facebook: a pix is worth a million words.
Nairaland= read only
facebook = clothed in bright colors (white=brightness,blue=cool)
nL = sober tame colors

facebook = an identity card for netizens
nL = anonymous party

facebook=fosters connection , relationships
,includg makg new ones.
NL = fosters readg and postg.
Instant connection not possible.

Facebook= always innovatg
nL = slow to innovate ,if at all.
(no nL app 4 all platforms, no
acquisitions and diversifcations etc).

Yeah NL really needs 2 step up their game. I believe that if NL was to be a social network with better features than Facebook, it will win.

asalimpo: @davidsmith
when i say nigerians must succeed in their domain,i'm statg a simple business method for success. Mobil,walmart,microsoft,ibm were all local players b4 expandg their market base to a global scale.
A 9jn strtup has to successful in its home country first.
If d strtup cannot conquer its home market tht it is familiar with ,how will survve in a different culture.

On confidence, the market has to be excited about d venture. This isnt d case. Nigerians blv in things wen it is very successful not bf. Low patronage will kill d brightest strtup. E.g take NL for example, talk of twitter,facebook 10+million nigerians ,NL ! How many? Create a nigerianized facebook,twitter etc Without heavy in-your face advertsg (smthg outof d range of strtups) you maynt b patronzed. Dealdey, is using tht but in strups in d u.s most grew virally because the ppl were excited about d idea And adopted it. This is d confidence i'm talkg about. Napster,gnutella,yahoo,grew by early adoption.
Some apps tht a nigerian dev would b struggling to sell here ,he may not struggle to sell in the west.
Imagine u wrote an erp solution and ur company tried to sell it to nigerian big corporations would they consider you? No. Except mayb u hav a foreign degree . If u attended ekiti state university ,nobody will listen to you.
If u did same in china, a chinese investor will expand ur idea and grow it to become the national alternatve to sap,ms dynamics and other foreign brands . Bf u know it tht chinese company will begin competing globally against the big wigs. In nigeria, companies will focus in traing an army of ppl in how to use the foreign software. How to certify in it. Again, its a confidence issue.
We are suffering from national scale inferiority complex period.
Dyu know there's chinese apple competitor by xaomi ltd. Honda is an asian car, samsung is asian etc
now as d asian companies succeed so will confidence of citizens grow in tht area. E.g nigerian music has advanced more thn its movies in quality,so some nigerian youths are now confident and proud to identify with our local musicians.

Our work ethics are poor. At d core of successful nations are hard wrkg ethcal ppl. The chinese ,japanese,americans are more dedicated and focused and humane . How dyu employ som1 for peanuts and want him to work well, want him to work even on sundays , livg to wrk 4 you no time 4 himself, this is d nigerian situation.
Bcs som1 is employg u he expects to insult you at will and u shd smile and lick it up . (see how lecturers treat students. No respect. ) . They want to tell u,tht ur nothg cuz u dnt have the kind of stuffs they hav(cars,gadgets etc).
Add all this together and u know why 9ja nothg to reckn with in d tech world,globally.
I know som strtups hav receivd fundg,but honestly, this strtups are not creatg ground breakg products tht can cause d kinda emotional reaction the likes of their western counterparts have experienced. Y, because tech isnt a mindset but a means to an end here(make money).
Compare:
mindset:
search can b done better,
the search engines available just
aint getting it right. I'll research search in my phD thesis.
Result = google.

Copyrighted software vendors infringe on users rights to use software as the wish.
I'll do somthg about it.
Gripe about it with my friends at d pub.then continue with my life-wrkg for this evil corps?no.
Outcome = free software,open source movement ,Linux.
In 9ja rchrd stallman wouldve been convcted and sentenced on spurious charges for going against the status quo.
Computers are ugly, i want computers tht are quiet, and insanely great.
I dnt care wht d engineers thk , this is wat i want.
Outcome = apple
the typcal 9jan mindset wud b , just do it any how any how as far as its wrkg . Hurry up and ship it!
Summary: our wrk ethics and mindset, acceptance of mediocrity as a modus operandus is killing any hope of creatg globally impactg entities

I get what you are saying now. You made alot of valid points. I just wish we could change all of this so that Nigeria/Africa will be on top once again. What if Nigerian App Developers could talk to International Developers and make apps for Nigerians but were made in Abroad in order to gain a better reputation?

ifex370: lack of information...since discovering Nairaland, i have hence shut down my fb account...

Interesting, so NairaLand needs 2 work on their marketing skills, will you say that is the case?

naijatechworld: I think its because Facebook connects people with the world, while NairaLand connects people with only Nigerians.

Yeah I can see this happening. But what ads, aren't ads suppose 2 connect people with the outside world?

nollyj:
You can use Nairaland without login but not with Facebook. Unregistered members of Nairaland might be bigger that registered members

Yeah I see your point. So most come just to browse or lurk, not to give inputs.