New to Android? That's great! You'll need to know a little bit of Kotlin and Android. The beauty of computer programming is that you do not need to formally go to school to learn how to program. You can learn almost everything that you would need to know online, and for free.
The following resources are some that I have personally used and that I highly recommend for anyone looking to learn how to build Android applications.
Android Basics in Kotlin
These are free online training courses developed by Google that help you learn how to build basic Android apps. The courses are made up of units. And units are composed of pathways. You may be wondering, what is a pathway? It’s an ordered sequence of activities to learn a specific skill.
An activity can be a video, hands-on coding tutorial (known as a codelab), an article, or quiz. All these activities are meant to help you reach specific learning objectives by the end of each pathway.
Android Kotlin Fundamentals
This course is also developed by Google, and has ten pathways available. This track requires you to have prior programming experience.
You will learn about:
- Navigation
- Activity and Fragment lifecycles
- Architecture components
- Databases and RecyclerView
- Repository and WorkManager
- Material Design
Learn Android by Example
As you get into more advanced features, you will likely need to learn more programming concepts. You can check out this resource for that.
This is an official set of small and simple annotated examples designed for those new to Kotlin by the Jetbrains team. No prior knowledge of any programming language is required.
Kotlin Koans
This is a series of exercises to get you familiar with the Kotlin syntax and language features. Each exercise is created as a failing unit test, and you need to make it pass.
Udacity
This course is built in collaboration with Google, but it is not free. It will prepare you to become a professional Android developer and allow you to create a diverse portfolio of projects to show employers.
By the end of this program, you will be able to use Android development platform best-practices, Android Jetpack, and Kotlin to build your own Android apps.
Ray Wenderlich
All of Ray Wenderlich's tutorials are created by a community of mobile development experts from around the world. No matter how long you’ve been coding, their courses format will help you become a better developer!
Some of these courses are free, but some others will require you to have a monthly subscription on their platform to be able to access them.
Learn More
- Kotlin Vocabulary series
- Official Android Developers Blog (for announcements)
- Android Developers Medium Blog (for more technical articles)
- Android Developers YouTube channel
- Follow @AndroidDev on Twitter
I hope these resources will help you get started. I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences on how you got started with Android development. Hit me up!
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