Android App Developer Roadmap

You will learn how to develop applications for the Android platform.

Some knowledge of object-oriented programming will be helpful, but not required.

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What you’ll learn

Java programming language
Kotlin programming language
Using Android Studio
How to develop Android applications using Java or Kotlin
Android Material Design

Overview

Android is one of the most widely used mobile platforms today with over 2 billion monthly active users and millions of apps on the Play Store. Android accounts for over 85% of the total mobile traffic on websites.

As an Android developer, you will have a chance to cater to this huge audience by creating mobile apps/games. You can work as an indie developer and publish your own apps or work for one of the existing publishers. There is no shortage of opportunities!

Java Programming Language

Head first series of books are popular because of their unique approach to explaining. If you want to dive deep, Derek Banas’s tutorial is a massive one that covers many aspects of the language.

Head First Java (amazon)

Java Video Tutorial by Derek Banas (youtube.com)

Resource

Coding Exercises

Kotlin Programming Language

Kotlin docs are neatly organized and a useful resource for beginners. If you prefer learning by doing, you can follow the second tutorial in this list.

Kotlin Tutorial (official docs) (kotlinlang.org)

Learn Kotlin while developing an Android App (medium.com)

Resource

Kotlin vs. Java

Android Development

Stanford has made its Android Development course available to the general public, so we recommend you capitalize on that. If you don’t want to take a full-fledged course, you can go for the official Android Developer guides.

Android App Development by Stanford (web.stanford.edu)

Training for Android developers (developer.android.com)

Resource

Open Source Apps

Android Studio

This video series covers how-tos of Android Studio. You can go through all the videos or skip to the part you are looking for.

Android development with Android Studio (youtube.com)

Material Design

This tutorial will teach you how to beautify your app by following Google’s material design guidelines and adding animation effects, widgets, toolbars, etc.

Android Material Design Tutorial (youtube.com)

All In One

This course covers almost every aspect of Android development using the latest version: 8.0 Oreo, from the language (Java) to publishing your app on the play store.

The Complete Android Oreo Developer Course - Build 23 Apps (udemy.com)

Android O

How to follow this roadmap?

If you want to take one course that teaches you everything you need to publish your first app, skip to the ‘All In One’ section.
Start with learning Java. Most projects and tutorials you will find on the web will be using Java.
You can choose to learn Kotlin or skip this section. Kotlin is interoperable with Java, so it won’t hurt to experiment with it. Check out ‘Java vs Kotlin’ to see the advantages of Kotlin. Note: Kotlin became the official language for Android in 2017.
Now that you know the language, you can start with Android development. Both tutorials in ‘Android Development’ section require familiarity with Java. Post completion, you can check out some open source apps and try to implement on your own.
If you are using Android Studio as your development environment, you can refer the ‘Android Studio’ section in case you get stuck or want to explore.
‘Material Design’ section is optional. You can come back to this section once you are comfortable writing apps or skip it entirely.

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Hector

1 month ago

It looks like a decent roadmap!