A complete map for beginners to professionals of Android development in 2024
A lot of people often ask me what order they should follow the steps to learn Android from Zero to Pro, so I decided that in this article I will give you a clear path to exactly that right away. I’m not a big fan of learning with roadmaps in the classic sense, but if you read books… If you just watch videos about Android, you won’t become an Android developer No Android developer can take custom requirements and requirements and build a functional application from those requirements, so I will include an aspect in the roadmap and I will introduce and tell you explicitly when you should practice your skills in a real-world project.
A complete map for beginners to professionals of Android development in 2024
Before we go ahead first of all, to get started and before you can do anything on Android you need to learn the basics which first includes learning Kotlin as a programming language since this is the main language we use for native Android development and then followed by the basics of Android development Android basics include things Like creating basic UI activities, parts of navigation permission, dealing with notifications, all that stuff, my Android Essentials playlist covers all of that while we build our UI in XML there while all subsequent playlists and videos use that using jetpick.
Learn the basics of XML
Yes latest UI framework and more modern framework I recommend learning XML basics because you need it as an Android developer nowadays but after that, I recommend focusing more on Jetpack builds which is the future of UI building in Android although I will always start a new app Using jetpack .compose
Nowadays, XML is still industry-wide and it’s important to know and understand that since it’s still the core of most Android UIs, so for all that for annual Kotlin basics, before you can work on any kind of product in the world Real, watch these playlists, but then after you have some sort of understanding of what the Android app consists of.
Build an application that I highly recommend Skip all the fancy stuff out there like architecture patterns, dependency, basic injection routines, clean architecture, etc, and actually build something, I don’t care much about how what you’re building works as long as it’s an application that does something Because in the end learning works well.
You should enjoy the process, so I encourage you to experiment as much as you can Enjoy the process Starting imperfectly is a thousand times better than not starting at all because you’re always trying to make it perfect right away, so it’s a very great first idea for an app that you can create without software educational.
It will be a calculator app, so all you need to do is:
Created some nice simple UI for basic calculator calculation using just regular mathematical operators.
Then put in the work and create this app from your hands. Having brainpower without a tutorial is what makes you learn something after you finish it.
Know how to handle different data sources in your application along with asynchronous programming.
For example, a network connection with an API where you might wait 1 second for an answer so you’ll find the links to both of these playlists below again Next, after you know how asynchronous software works and what it is, I recommend learning how You can interact with a local database in Android.
How can you save persistent data on Android
You can do this so that the data stays through the app and it also runs when you reboot the device, so I recommend starting with the room library which I’ll also link a crash course to below, and then again create an app using what you’ve learned since you now know how to save data consistently.
And I would recommend creating something like a simple to-do list app so that you have an app where you have a list of tasks so you can check them off, uncheck them and if you click on them to do that, you’ll get your details screen where you can, yeah check it or simply refresh it once Other.
Just make it work to execute the application with space, so save that stuff in the database and then you’ve already learned a lot after that, I recommend learning to retrofit and interact with remote APIs.
Use retrofit in Android applications
After you’ve learned the basics of retrofit pretty simply, then I recommend creating a simple app using retrofit it can be something very simple, like a random duck app for example, it will use the random API so you can simply Google it so it’s a free API Which just gives you an image of a random duck that you can display in your app but teaches you how you can interact with the API.
Learn the concepts of the Android application domain
Sometimes I mentioned that you should not focus on learning Android architecture until you learn the concepts that make the application scope and of course, proper software architecture is very important to write an application that is maintainable, well-testable, and scalable but not before that application where you simply expose a duck Random or an app just for you that displays a list of to-do items.
You don’t need architecture, proper architecture becomes relevant when your app has ten thousand, twenty thousand, or a hundred thousand lines of code that you simply don’t have with these simple things, so it’s very important as a beginner to focus on building apps and learn to think like an Android developer.
