Ever since I got my first smartphone (which, by the way, is a Samsung Galaxy S which I still use), I’ve wanted to try my hand at doing some development on it and although I have some app ideas from time to time, I never really got into the mindset to really do it. Until now, as I have been spending some time in the last few days to learn about Android app development.
So far it seems to make sense: the tutorial I’ve followed goes through the steps of creating a layout and adding some behavior (which is aggregated into activities). I think this is similar to some of the web development I’ve done: you define the layouts in XML files in mostly the same way you would HTML files, then add behavior through activities, which map roughly to the concept of Controller in the MVC pattern commonly found in web frameworks.
In terms of the developer support, the basic Android documentation so far has been more than enough. Besides a few tutorials, you have (of course) the Android API reference, which will probably come in handy soon, tool guides and guides for Google services. My feelings about the SDK are a bit mixed. It’s big, as it packs an Eclipse-based IDE, and has tons of tools. I couldn’t get the IDE to work properly, although I haven’t really tried hard. Instead I went full command line and don’t think it’s the intended mode of usage: the tutorials seem more IDE oriented, with the command line equivalents being a bit of a second class citizen. In hindsight, these first developer resources are probably targeted at entry-level developers.
I’ll keep posting updates on my progress (if I make any).
