Getting Started with Android Development

Android has become very popular recently, especially among developers which would like to create some nice apps for mobile environments. This trend can be noted also when looking at the Android category on Stackoverflow. There are a lot of quite simple, introductory questions regarding Android development. Generally speaking, I'd say this is positive :). A lot of interest from the developer community means more apps on the market (forget about the app quality for now ;)).

Today I answered a question about how to get started with Android. Normally I could straight point you to developer.android.com. Google has a lot of very good articles and tutorials there. Here's how I started about more than a year ago with Android (the quoted answer from Stackoverflow):

I personally started reading and understanding the Android Application Fundamentals. Then I downloaded the Android ADT (Development Toolkit), configured it on Eclipse as well as the SDK (including samples). Once that's set up, I started with the ApiDemos. You find its source code directly in the downloaded SDK/samples/android-9/ApiDemos. Try to debug the code in the IDE, modify it and see how it reacts. Finally, have fun :)

The Android Application Fundamentals is a must read for all new developers. You really have to understand how the system is constructed and supposed to work. Activities, Services, Broadcast Receivers, Intents,... these are the concepts of Android and do not really exist in a similar form on other platforms.

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