Rate this book

Learning Android (2011)

by Marko Gargenta(Favorite Author)

3.61 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1449390501 (ISBN13: 9781449390501)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

O'Reilly Media

review 1: This is a reasonably good book to get you started on Android app development.I like the approach: uses a non-trivial app (a Twitter-like client, complete with updates, logins, preferences, continuous background downloading of tweets, etc.), and explains concepts in the concept of developing the app. The app is developed incrementally, so that you have something simple and limited running very soon, and then this is continuously refined with more functionality. All the code, and the development environment, are downloadable from the Web, so you can learn by actually doing.If you don't know Java or any object-oriented programming, and if you've never used an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) before, you may struggle to follow the book. (Here, and in Android in gene... moreral, one uses Java and the Eclipse IDE).I actually bought this book because it was recommended for a course I had signed up for, but in going through the book in advance, I felt I didn't need that classroom course after all, i.e., the book is pretty self-contained and followable on its own.There are still some typos in the book (even though it's not the first edition), and like any fast-moving target like Android, the book is some versions behind the latest Android release, and so there are some inconsistencies with the current situation. But I didn't think any of those differences were a show-stopper.
review 2: Up through chapter 10, this book is nearly perfect- with a thoughtfully chosen example application built up from nothing, logically introducing concepts as they are needed- the origins of the book as a training class are clearly visible.Unfortunately, in chapter 10 (which introduces databases) the quality of the code fragments goes down- I like to actually type in the code as shown in the book, which reinforces the concepts for me. Unfortunately the code shown in the book at this point is incomplete, so I had to download the samples from the book site and compare. This was frustrating to say the least, and slowed me down significantly.That said, this book does cover just about everything you're going to need to know to write Android apps, and does so in a pretty clear well thought out way. less

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