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Android programming, looking for good guides for beginners

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Re: Android programming, looking for good guides for beginners

#21

Post by serf »

yaitsyaboi wrote: post #18
0xcde4c3db wrote: post #2

I'm not sure how mainstream of an opinion this is, but I'd suggest skipping Google's own tutorials. It would be reasonable to suppose that a multi-billion-dollar corporation that massively benefits from a thriving developer community would put out first-rate documentation, but I was quite disappointed by how much of an inconsistent and incomplete mess those tutorials are. While I've only briefly skimmed it myself, I'…

Is there any example where a library/framework's creator has the best getting started documentation for learning how to use it? I'm lazy and not very academic, and I feel like I always end up following a Medium or Hackernoon tutorial and using the official API docs for supplemental reference. I feel like this has been my experience for Flutter, React, ReactNative, Docker. I'm actually curious what folks' favorite 1st…

it's an outdated opinion probably, but K&R 'The C Programming Language' is a gem.[0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_C_Programming_Language

Re: Android programming, looking for good guides for beginners

#22

Post by rubyskills »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #12
rubyskills wrote: post #7

This may be a little of topic, but I think that Google's Flutter is really game changing. It let's you write your app once and deploy down to iOS and Android and does so compiled to the target environment. Compared to other cross platform mobile development frameworks, I think they're at the top performance wise.

Unless things have changed drastically in the past 6 months, Flutter still isn't ready for the limelight. It trails React Native significantly.

Why do you say that? It's currently being used in production by Google. Can you be more specific about how Flutter is trailing React Native from a tech POV?

Re: Android programming, looking for good guides for beginners

#23

Post by haecceity »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #2

I'm not sure how mainstream of an opinion this is, but I'd suggest skipping Google's own tutorials. It would be reasonable to suppose that a multi-billion-dollar corporation that massively benefits from a thriving developer community would put out first-rate documentation, but I was quite disappointed by how much of an inconsistent and incomplete mess those tutorials are. While I've only briefly skimmed it myself, I'…

I've been reading those Android docs. It's not great but better than nothing.

Re: Android programming, looking for good guides for beginners

#24

Post by Cube189 »

lostgame wrote: post #14
0xcde4c3db wrote: post #2

I'm not sure how mainstream of an opinion this is, but I'd suggest skipping Google's own tutorials. It would be reasonable to suppose that a multi-billion-dollar corporation that massively benefits from a thriving developer community would put out first-rate documentation, but I was quite disappointed by how much of an inconsistent and incomplete mess those tutorials are. While I've only briefly skimmed it myself, I'…

To be honest, Apple’s own tutorials aren’t really that much better, and are also often outdated. Raywenderlich.com is always my first pick.

Looks really good. Thanks for the recommendation. Will definitely check it out later.

Re: Android programming, looking for good guides for beginners

#25

Post by dTal »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #2

I'm not sure how mainstream of an opinion this is, but I'd suggest skipping Google's own tutorials. It would be reasonable to suppose that a multi-billion-dollar corporation that massively benefits from a thriving developer community would put out first-rate documentation, but I was quite disappointed by how much of an inconsistent and incomplete mess those tutorials are. While I've only briefly skimmed it myself, I'…

I have a pet theory that mobile development is deliberately intractable as a kind of gatekeeping tactic. There's certainly no excuse for it to be as inaccessible as it is, with the resources available. There is an aggressive rejection of the mobile phone as a user-oriented computing platform - instead you must be a "developer", and to prove that you are a "developer" you must devote an enormous amount of disk space to "developer tools" and tolerate byzantine project structures and weird languages, which require byzantine IDEs to manage. The provision for writing software actually on these devices with an order of magnitude more power than a Cray-2 is actively suppressed. God forbid I be able to write a friggin Python script on my phone...

This isn't necessarily conscious conspiracy on the part of the perpetrators. But it's a systemic attitude that ultimately has the same effect, and the incentives point in that direction. Remember, Google/Apple only make money on their respective app stores when you buy an app - free apps are worthless to them, as are apps you write yourself; free software apps that let you escape the ecosystem are worse than worthless!

Re: Android programming, looking for good guides for beginners

#26

Post by DonCopal »

Setheck wrote: post #6

https://developer.android.com/ and start reading

I don't know why you get downvoted. If they are a complete beginner, they should go to https://developer.android.com/guide and first learn about the concepts such as Intents, Resources, Android Manifest, Activities/Fragments etc. It's all there in one place.

Re: Android programming, looking for good guides for beginners

#27

Post by SkyPuncher »

rubyskills wrote: post #22
SkyPuncher wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless things have changed drastically in the past 6 months, Flutter still isn't ready for the limelight. It trails React Native significantly.

Why do you say that? It's currently being used in production by Google. Can you be more specific about how Flutter is trailing React Native from a tech POV?

"Being used in production by Google" is a poor quality measure for most companies/people.

Google, and similarly large companies, have an entire infrastructure and internal community built around supporting tech stacks. If/When developers hit bugs or limitations, Google has the resources to address it. They can literally assign an entire team to improve a single performance aspect of Flutter or build any missing functionality (much of which is going to stay internal to Google).

Outside developers don't have that ability or bandwidth. They can't afford to stop feature development for days or weeks to figure out quirks/improve Flutter. They're almost 100% reliant on public feature set and community support.

From a pure tech POV, Flutter seems like a better technology approach. However, there have been plenty of "technologically better" frameworks that have failed because the general community does not support them.

Re: Android programming, looking for good guides for beginners

#29

Post by amerkhalid »

yaitsyaboi wrote: post #18
0xcde4c3db wrote: post #2

I'm not sure how mainstream of an opinion this is, but I'd suggest skipping Google's own tutorials. It would be reasonable to suppose that a multi-billion-dollar corporation that massively benefits from a thriving developer community would put out first-rate documentation, but I was quite disappointed by how much of an inconsistent and incomplete mess those tutorials are. While I've only briefly skimmed it myself, I'…

Is there any example where a library/framework's creator has the best getting started documentation for learning how to use it? I'm lazy and not very academic, and I feel like I always end up following a Medium or Hackernoon tutorial and using the official API docs for supplemental reference. I feel like this has been my experience for Flutter, React, ReactNative, Docker. I'm actually curious what folks' favorite 1st…

I needed to use only official docs for Laravel and before that CodeIgniter.

Also I really like React’s documentation. Previously, I had used random tutorials to get started but recently I went through their official docs to fill in gaps in my knowledge. Now I wish I had started with official docs in the first place.

Re: Android programming, looking for good guides for beginners

#30

Post by GFischer »

dakna wrote: post #3

I recommend working through the beginner and advanced programming for Android tutorials on Udacity, both are free: https://www.udacity.com/course/developing-android-apps-with-... https://www.udacity.com/course/advanced-android-with-kotlin-... That gives you a solid start to look into more details and do some codelabs on https://codelabs.developers.google.com/?cat=Android or watch a series about a certain topic on You…

That's a good idea. I did the University of Maryland Coursera course and I liked it a lot:

https://www.coursera.org/learn/android-programming

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