On Tuesday 10 August 2010 19:51:32 Andy Random wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm looking for a good place to start to learn about developing apps
> for Android.
>
> I have more years than I'm willing to admit to of software
> development (Assembler/C/Perl) experience but have never done
> anything with Java and have fairly limited experience of OO coding
> in general.
In which case, how about learning Java first? Grab Eclipse (the
Android SDK plugs into the Eclipse IDE, so it's a good IDE to
start with) and find some simple tutorials that teach about
packages, classes, interfaces and exceptions. Understanding these
will probably help a lot since they're the first obvious big
difference between Java and C.
After that, it's all pretty similar to C, except that the API
is a lot more feature rich (or bloated, depending on your point
of view). Using an SDK like Eclipse helps here, since it gives
you lots of hints about what methods are available with each
object.
Once you're comfortable enough with the language to know where
to look to find answers, then try the Android SDK. Most of it
will just be APIs, which is easy to pick up - but without
understanding the list of things I gave above, it's probably
going to be confusing.
My first Java book (back in the 1.1 days) was "Java In Plain English",
which assumed you knew C/C++ and was basically a guide to Java
equivalents to C/C++ features. It was most useful, but probably
seriously out of date (and possibly out of print).
FWIW, I've just got my first Android phone (Dell Streak), and
I'm about to start down the same path. However, I do already
know Java.
--
Be seeing you, http://www.glendale.org.uk
Sam. Mail/IM (Jabber): sam@???
