Developing applications for mobiles is very common nowadays, and an increasingly amount of people are diving into the world of mobile app development. After all mobile application can offer a significant amount of income with a wide audience of consumers. With over 300 million devices and 800.000 getting activated every day it means serious business for a lot of mobile application development companies. So if you're one of those people with a passion on learning new stuff and want to get started, then here is a small list with good places to start. This list is for Android development only and is just a recommendation. Furthermore a degree in information technology and or other computer sciences would be also recommended to get a job as a mobile software developer.
Before you start:
- You should have basic understanding of programming in general.
- A solid background with the Java programming language.
A good place to start would be the official Android Developers website. It is The most complete manual in the web with complete documentation for all API levels and with basic tutorials for creating applications.
As with any kind of software development, Google is you friend! Search for discussion boards, forums, tutorials and other sources and don't be afraid to ask questions on how-to's about Android development. A good place to ask is Stackoverflow, a Q&A board.
A while ago, I was looking into Android development my self and my preference for learning is Audio-Visual instead of reading a huge book. I searched Youtube and found a very interesting channel. Marakana TechTV. They offer some of their high quality seminars for free on Youtube. A visit on their channel is a must.
Of course there thousands more videos and websites offering knowledge, others for free others for a small fee. I would suggest the free route but this will also be the hardest. You should learning all the basics for free and create a solid foundation with this free knowledge. After that if you're still serious about developing for mobiles, you should start buying more advanced books on other topics like game development, NDK (native development in C++), seminars etc.
Now what about software? If you ask any Android developer 99% of them will answer Eclipse. The Eclipse IDE (integrated development environment) is the #1 choice for Android development with a deeply engrained support of Android. Eclipse is used by most professionals and not only for Android but for other languages as well. If you're already familiar with Java you should know about Eclipse.
For readers who want to start from scratch, there are two Youtube channels I would recommend for learning Java. 1st is Bucky's Youtube channel with a long course of Java programming tutorials and 2nd is MyBringBack Channel with also a long list of Java tutorials. Both of these guys offer them freely and do a very good job on teaching. So pay them a visit and decide which tutorial format you like and also browse their other playlists because they also offer Android development tutorials.
Bucky's The New Boston
So there you go. A few resources that should get you started with Android development. Hope you find the information on this post useful and develop something really awesome and make big bucks! ;)
Good luck!
