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Learning to Develop on Android

So I've been palying around with the Android SDK. I've done a bit of developing before, but never in Java. The Android APIs are pretty well documented, but I'm missing the basics of Java programming (data types, declaring variables and constants, file operations, etc.).
Does anyone have any suggested references? I've been digging some myself but it's slow going.

If you haven't already, check out http://www.helloandroid.com , http://www.anddev.org , and look for O'Reilly books on Java or skip the first five chapters of "Java for Dummies."

Both of those are really focused on Android specifically. Anddev.org is really for developers while HelloAndroid.com is more of a blog and not much technical info.
Here's the best site I was able to find about the Java basics.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Java_Programming/Overview
After that it just learning the APIs, and I think Anddev is really going to be the site to watch on that.
I thought I'd share in case there are other aspirng developers watching.

Developing Thread
I didn't know where to add this, but if you need to move it to the right thread please do.
I want to start developing, but I don't know any Java. I'm sure that you guys probably know some books that I can pick up to start learning. Actually any advice or resources would be great since.
Ever since i got the G1 and seeing everybody speaking code it realy started to interest me. So any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you

I heard the dummy books aren't that good to start off with, but thanks I'll still look at it.

Bump,
Come on people i know you have some ideas, so i can learn java or anything to develop for Android.

Im also thinkin about starting or trying to develop for Android, like how would I start off makin a custom rom build?

Come on guys
See here

Christopher3712 said:
Come on guys
See here
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
that would have worked great if you spelled develop right LOL

The thing with programming textbooks is no one can ever agree on what book is "best". Some people like books that are basically just giant lists of functions and their syntaxes, some people like books with a lot of examples, some people like books that primarily explain the most basic functions in plain English. Some folks don't like to use books at all and learn programming purely from studying others' source code.
A lot of the Java-specific books written in the past decade are written without requiring pre-existing knowledge of C++, which would be good if you have never programmed in any language before. I think the "Headfirst Java" volume is supposed to be well-regarded, but I can't say that from personal experience.
Of course, you could always just find your local community college/adult school/vocational center and sign up for Java classes. Some community colleges might place Java far down in the CS track and make you take prerequisite courses. Depending on how the course is set up, what text it uses, and how much ground it intends to cover, it may or may not have prerequisites.
Good luck

neoobs said:
that would have worked great if you spelled develop right LOL
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lol, i'm just all over the place today! no matter, i made my point

Christopher3712 said:
lol, i'm just all over the place today! no matter, i made my point
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wasnt referring to apps, but thanks?

Christopher3712 said:
Come on guys
See here
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OMG hahahahaha i love it!

Learning to Develope on Android
I want to learn how to develop apks, use the SDK to its fall extent. I put Debian on my phone and windows x , made a couple of my own themes. However, i want to do more i just don't how the knowledge to do so. i tried to read on how to use java, c++, c.net, etc but I'm just not picking it up all to well. I just installed Ubuntu on my computer but my knowledge of Linux is very little. I'm welling to put the time and effort into learning how do these thing but I'm getting no where. Watching people like JK come out with roms just makes me want to do the same. i also just updated to the new SDK but for some reason it won't work (haven't gone around to find out why thou). Can anyone help me out, maybe point to toward some good sources, books, or whatever. i love messing with me G1 i just want to take it to the next level. i finish school on the 20th of this month and i have till July 15th of free time ( i leave for Basic Training). so i would like to get started between these times.
If a similar thread was already made i'm very sorry i searched like crazy to find one but had no luck, so please don't get made if there is one just point me to it.
THANK YOU

www.android.com
find source code to play with and read, read, read!

dead2hill said:
www.android.com
find source code to play with and read, read, read!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have read so much my head could explode, but i think I'm reading from the wrong sources or just not getting it at all. I'm reading some books i got from friends with Master Degrees in this stuff and they are just confusing me.
The major problem is I'm a fantastic hands on learner but i have no one with the spare time to help on any of these. I've been taking the Cisco Academy Online and didn't get any of it until i had someone help with a hands on learning and it all just flowed right into me easily now i'm close to getting my CCNA.
But i'll keep reading till i get it, some day

fankly i would say if you wanna make apps then read a buch of tutorials, stare ata lot a source code. and create a few simple things first. i have not bothered with any of the sample's with the SDK because i just don't like them. i do however read lots of code daily and am currently trying to find the best way to get my app running. i am one of those people that if handeed source code i could tell you what it does and when, but if told to write a program that does something it will take ages for me to figure out. even with a year of both java and VB .net under the belt i still don't know much since those classes where a long time ago. read lots of code and you could probably benefit from having a java book around too

I found the sample code and tutorials shipped with the SDK very educational, and would recommend the soon-to-be Android developer to plow thru them. They give you (at least they gave me!) a basic understanding of how Android apps are supposed to work.
If you're not used to general Java development at all, I recommend starting out with a beginners book on Java development first.
/Mats

@hellsonlyangel - I have the same desire to learn how application development as you, particularly Android development. I've done the same as you over the years, reading tons of books and online tutorials on programming, but learning very little. I am taking a very general, but comprehensive, scripting course right now as a part of my Network Admin degree program, and I fell that I understand more after 2 weeks in this course than I did from all of my self study attempts. Sometimes, there's just no substitute to structured learning programs. The ISBN for the book that my course is using is 1418836338. It can be had on the cheap, used for around $8, just in case you want to check it out. Good luck.

hellsonlyangel said:
I want to learn how to develop apks, use the SDK to its fall extent. I put Debian on my phone and windows x , made a couple of my own themes. However, i want to do more i just don't how the knowledge to do so. i tried to read on how to use java, c++, c.net, etc but I'm just not picking it up all to well. I just installed Ubuntu on my computer but my knowledge of Linux is very little. I'm welling to put the time and effort into learning how do these thing but I'm getting no where. Watching people like JK come out with roms just makes me want to do the same. i also just updated to the new SDK but for some reason it won't work (haven't gone around to find out why thou). Can anyone help me out, maybe point to toward some good sources, books, or whatever. i love messing with me G1 i just want to take it to the next level. i finish school on the 20th of this month and i have till July 15th of free time ( i leave for Basic Training). so i would like to get started between these times.
If a similar thread was already made i'm very sorry i searched like crazy to find one but had no luck, so please don't get made if there is one just point me to it.
THANK YOU
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So the best way I found to learn this is through trial and error. I will write code for a simple program, for instance a clock app. I will work on it until it does what I want it to then I will trash the code and build it again using what I just learned. It's just a lot of practice and don't get too deep until you have a full grasp of the concepts behind programming. You'll just get stuck and frustrated.

[Q] Where can I learn how to develop apps?

Hi, I am looking to develop windows mobile apps for my HTC HD2 and I was wondering if there is a free online course or some places that I can learn everything I need to know to start developing ASAP, I hope to become good at this and I will be posting on the forums frequently but can someone help me out? It would be greatly appreciated if you could give me some links.

TechBurrow said:
Hi, I am looking to develop windows mobile apps for my HTC HD2 and I was wondering if there is a free online course or some places that I can learn everything I need to know to start developing ASAP, I hope to become good at this and I will be posting on the forums frequently but can someone help me out? It would be greatly appreciated if you could give me some links.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ASAP? you could also begin with Visual Basic. thats Easy to learn and quite powerful.

hey yo techburrow i am really new to smartphones and apps. i got my hd2 less than a month ago...but i feel the same way...it feels like it's really underground to learn and teach this stuff. i wish i new someone to teach me some of it...but i have learned more on this topic at this site in a week than anywhere else. it is truly wonderful. have you tried wikipedia for more info? i wish this site had a "xda term dictionary". i'm having trouble just figuring out what words mean...but maybe they do and i haven't found it yet. good luck...your first app should be for people llike you who want to know how to build there own apps and don't know how. "myappbuilder" or something...peace.

Start here :
http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=Development Tools
The link at the bottom takes you to a pile of other stuff.
http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=Complete list of Development links and resources
P.S. Don't expect to learn all this stuff overnight, it's a long hard slog to become any good at it. Even then you'll still find room for improvement.
Good luck and don't give up.

Join some good school....

Seriously want to start Developing - Need some help.

It's not just another one of those 'LOLZ WANA DEVLOP PLZZ HELPPPZZ'.....
I'm very serious and need to know where to start off. I would maybe do it for a living when I'm older. It's something I've been wanting to do for a while. I used to mess around with some private servers coded in Java, but I didn't learn much.
I'm just wondering if there was a place where I could take classes online, or a good way to start off. I would be using my Evo for development aswell.
Any serious help would be appreciated.

nsteger123 said:
It's not just another one of those 'LOLZ WANA DEVLOP PLZZ HELPPPZZ'.....
I'm very serious and need to know where to start off. I would maybe do it for a living when I'm older. It's something I've been wanting to do for a while. I used to mess around with some private servers coded in Java, but I didn't learn much.
I'm just wondering if there was a place where I could take classes online, or a good way to start off. I would be using my Evo for development aswell.
Any serious help would be appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Me to....
Sent from my X10i using XDA App

The best place to learn and this may be a shock...for real. But i had begun to read an android development book and that didnt really do it for me but when i started to read Google Development pages it all made sense.
developer.android.com
Check it out.

1) read the entire dev guide
developer.android.com/guide/basics/what-is-android.html
2) install sdk and eclipse
3) build hello world and deploy to emulator, then to real device
You'll be on your way to devdom if you can make it through these 3 trivial steps

I bought three android books and they all seem to be very helpful in their own ways.
Hello, Android! 3rd edition - Great for beginners to the android platform
Professional Android 2 - Great and has a good amount of corners covered. From layouts to bluetooth and wifi. This one is by wrox and the code samples are available online without purchase verification.
Advanced Android - Good but not really worth is.

I've spend sometimes using eclipse but i can say it's quite buggy for now.
You may wanna stick to it but i suggest to test the last IntelliJ X Community
It's free and it get Android dev without plugins. I get this tips from the Twitter
of Romain Guy ...
For the dev, a little book from manning.com. They offers code is you register
you can get 50% of the price. Android in action.
Then for the advanved topics StackOverflow is now replacing the android
newbies developpers google group officially and there's a lot of advanced topics.
Give yourself some weeks to get some results, you've to learn the philosophy
of a new system.

[Q] Coding Android Game - Where to Start?

Hello,
I would like to get into Android game development, mainly as a hobby, but given how obsessed I can get about hobbies I will not rule anything out! I have limited programming background (a bit of C, VBA, JavaScript...just the basics: variables, If/Else, For/While Loops, Arrays, functions, sub-routines etc..) but I tend to pick these things up fairly quickly....however I expect this to be a real long term project for me.
I have attempted to determine a sensible starting location and direction for a beginner to get started, but with so much information it really is a little overwhelming and I can't figure out what would be the most productive way to spend my time right now.
I gather that Android development requires Java knowledge, right? If yes, can anyone recommend any good websites/books with tutorials and code samples that can be used by someone who doesn't have an coding background already? To what sort level should I try to attain in Java before it's worth considering the Android specific side of development (I'm aware 'level' might be very hard to define!), or should I be thinking about these things in tandem from fairly early on?
If anyone has gone through a similar process, can you share your experiences? Pitfalls to avoid? Things not to overlook?
I have a couple of hours a night to dedicate to this for the foreseeable future, so any help filling that time efficiently would be much appreciated!
p.s. If there is a forum that is more suited to my question that I'm not aware of then please let me know!
Thanks!
Jess

I once wanted to become a droid developer too bro! I didn't get far though as I needed to focus on my day job more.
Anyway, what I did was learn about SDKs first. Just google it up, there are actually a lot of tutorials on the web. You'll need to be prepared to spend some money though for the SDKs.

you might get an idea here
http://marakana.com/s/intro_to_android_development_tutorial,1018/index.html
good luck

cepcamba said:
I once wanted to become a droid developer too bro! I didn't get far though as I needed to focus on my day job more.
Anyway, what I did was learn about SDKs first. Just google it up, there are actually a lot of tutorials on the web. You'll need to be prepared to spend some money though for the SDKs.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the advice, I noticed that google has it's own SDK, is it still worth investing in one of the other options?

shanman-2 said:
you might get an idea here
http://marakana.com/s/intro_to_android_development_tutorial,1018/index.html
good luck
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for that. I've watched the first three so far, and have Eclipse & the SDK manager set up now. It was interesting to see that Android code is actually compiled twice, and given that the second stage doesn't have to be Java, it means that you can write the apps/games in something else, e.g. C.
Do you have any advice regarding which language would be the most sensible to code with? Apparently C is much faster for some things, so maybe it would make sense to dedicate myself to learning that rather than Java?

I don't know which would be best. All I can say is that I am learning java at the moment and hope to move on to android soon!!
Interesting to note Oracle are in court with Google at the moment in regards to copyright infringement. Android really is not a programming language , it's a mix of other languages....

I recommend this book...
http://goo.gl/APX0w
You can obviously get it at other places, and cheaper than that too, but it's a great book. It covers setting up Eclipse and the Android SDK and gets you going with lots of the major elements of both Java and Android together.
I rate it, but I rate Sams books in general. They've always been good.

New here, want to help.

I am a long time leecher here at XDA-Developers, but I decided to create an account and see if I could help anybody with anything.
I am a long time programmer, however I didn't really have any Java experience until I get interested in Android a few years back. I am mainly a web developer, and so Java wasn't really anything that I was focused on learning.
What I can do for the XDA community.
Because I am a long time leecher here, I decided that until I actually have something to contribute to the actual Android community, I can contribute what I already have.
I have several servers currently online, so I can host your git/svn projects online in a secure area. Be it private or public. I can also host a website for you and your projects. Most of the time it will cost you nothing, except maybe a domain name if I am broke. (I don't make much at my day job).
I can also host your applications cloud backend, or your apps web interface. Whatever you need me to do. I am a pretty good sysadmin, and already have everything to do it.
I can't thank all of the devs here enough, especially the Galaxy S3 and Note 3 devs considering that they are the devices that I have had recently.
Let me know if you need anything.
Thank you,
Dan

I support you, you're good, I do phone in China, there are many good products in foreign countries want to do some marketing and sales, but a national and regional mobile phone users do not understand. If so, I hope we can have a lot of cooperation. If you are interested you can contact friends

iamdanhenry said:
I am a long time leecher here at XDA-Developers, but I decided to create an account and see if I could help anybody with anything.
I am a long time programmer, however I didn't really have any Java experience until I get interested in Android a few years back. I am mainly a web developer, and so Java wasn't really anything that I was focused on learning.
What I can do for the XDA community.
Because I am a long time leecher here, I decided that until I actually have something to contribute to the actual Android community, I can contribute what I already have.
I have several servers currently online, so I can host your git/svn projects online in a secure area. Be it private or public. I can also host a website for you and your projects. Most of the time it will cost you nothing, except maybe a domain name if I am broke. (I don't make much at my day job).
I can also host your applications cloud backend, or your apps web interface. Whatever you need me to do. I am a pretty good sysadmin, and already have everything to do it.
I can't thank all of the devs here enough, especially the Galaxy S3 and Note 3 devs considering that they are the devices that I have had recently.
Let me know if you need anything.
Thank you,
Dan
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
We thank you joining. Also, offering to host files will help a lot of developers on this site.
You say that you're a common user of XDA. What are your other experiences with Android? Rooting? Any ROM experience?
--

I have rooted every device I have owned since my first Android device which was the Motorola droid X using guides from this site. Flashed countless roms to my different devices all downloaded from here.
I am going to start trying to take some roms apart and seeing what I can do with them. Hopefully I can patch a bug or two for some of you guys.
Try and spread the word that I can do what I can do, I don't want to come off as a spammer or anything so I am just going to leave it at this. you can link to this thread, and I will probably put it in my signature.
Thanks for your interest. If you know of any good guides for a beginner rom developer or kernel hacker I would love to read them.
Sent from my SM-N900P using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Welcome to XDA! i myself used to be a lurker for XDA, its very generous of you to help others with hosting websites, im sure you will get lots of people accepting your offer. its not very hard to develop apps kernels or custom roms, should only require patience and time (and maybe a little bit more ram, the more ram you have the faster you can build a rom ) hope to see you on the battlefield! enjoy your stay at new vegas!

Welcome
Welcome to XDA! Am also follower of this site... Now registered new bee
I am not a expert like you... Just within in very small limit of exploring

Thanks for the responses everyone. Glad to hear that I may actually be able to help a little until I get going.
Good to hear from all of you.
Sent from my SM-N900P using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

I have recently come into a couple of domains in a trade. The are androidery.com and myandroidreview.com.
I was just wondering if anyone would be interested in doing anything with these domains.
Possibly a popular developer or developers that need a place to host their roms and source control servers. Whatever it may be, let me know.
If you have other ideas for websites you can post here or PM me and I will try to help you out.
Thanks,
Daniel
Sent from my SM-N900P using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

OLD newbie..
I too, myself, have been leeching here since I joined XDA a few months back, and still in the process of learning android development.
I'm more in to embedded systems' programming and development, but lately android interests me, and just now decided to get active.
:victory: Welcome to XDA mates!

Welcome. I am new as well

Hello! I'm still new at here too! I hope i can make some contribution in XDA