I’m getting started with Android development in my scarce spare time. In order to get me past the “Java is scary and stupid and I hate it and it’s stupid” part of this, I decided to watch Jim Wilson’s Android for .NET Developers series. So far, I’ve watched Part 1 and Part 2.
I think Part 1 is a little hit or miss. Wilson starts off great, showing how to install the Android SDK. I’d recommend ignoring the Eclipse part and just download Android Studio and watch section 6 on Android Studio. The product has matured a good bit since Wilson did his course, so you won’t have to do the same workarounds that Wilson showed.
I think Part 1 started to slip once Wilson started to talk about Dalvik Debug Monitor Server. Debugging and monitoring is vital, but honestly, I think that would have been better-suited for part 2 or part 3. I get that you want to get people off the ground quickly, but until I have code that I could reasonably debug, it’s hard for me to get excited about a debugger.
Part 2 was fantastic. Wilson walked through a few basic applications. If you follow along in the code, you’ll have some basic applications which can make use of external resources like the camera, and which can also span several activities. Wilson’s depiction of the activity lifecycle is also excellent and really helped me understand what happens behind the scenes on my Android phone.
I haven’t gone through parts 3 and 4 yet, but when I get a little bit of time, I want to jump back into this topic. Once I complete the next two parts, I’ll have a separate review for those.
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