Android app development for noobs, my approach….

Since I last started to develop apps for Android, I just wanted to share my approach and maybe help new developers getting started. If you are interested in Android app development, you might have done some looking around on the net, trying to find a starting point in the enormous amount of resources to be found. Especially when you are not a developer to start with, finding this starting point can be quite hard. I myself have had some programming experience in Java before, which made it a bit easier, but still a lot of the resources and tutorials which are found on the web already assume a pretty broad understanding of programming in Java. For a beginner, however, a lot of the terms used can make the whole experience completely non-understandable and even with some experience in programming, I had to do a lot of catching up, especially reading up on Java references and learning the basic build up of an Android app and the foundations of the SDK.

So to be able to understand all the references used in tutorials, I just jumped right in and slowly started to piece together the information in tutorials by trying to get a simple app working in the Eclipse programming environment. I found out that working on a simple app, while I was actually learning Android programming helped me put all the information into practice. If I would just have read a lot of tutorials without trying to do something with the information, I would have quickly been lost. I recommend you look for a simple app idea, which can be useful in your everyday life, and try to develop it from reading the information in tutorials. I chose a simple calculator app which let me calculate my grade for a course at school. It is basically just a couple of screens which can accept user input and a calculator method which does the calculations and give the result. By developing such a simple app from start to end, you get the necessary experience in the whole developing process and this makes it easier to understand all the tutorials and information on some more difficult subjects.

After finishing this app from a first idea up to launch in the Market, I dove into some literature, which I bought from Commonsware.com. Here you can buy a subscription for $40 dollars a year which buys you 3 ebooks of each around 500 pages.:

- Android development (a walkthrough of the overall structure and principles used in Android development)

- Advanced Android development (a guide through the more expert topics)

- Android development tutorials (step by step tutorials taking you through a large part of all principles of Android development)

The benefit of getting ebooks is that Commonsware will update the books when a new version of the Android SDK will come out. This means that for a whole year, you get the most up to date information and you can also receive live-help via chat sessions or e-mail to a dedicated developer to help you with any problems.

So that is my advice to noob Android developers like me, first start to learn the language used in tutorials and literature by diving right in and try to develop a basic app. After you have this experience, reading in-depth literature is a lot easier to do and you won’t feel so overwhelmed. I know if I did not first develop my small app, I would have had to stop reading the literature after two pages because I just am not familiar with all the stuff they are talking about.

Good luck!