Head First Android Development: Starting Android development

[Jasminka Mancevska]

Hi Dawn and David,  

I am looking forward to try myself in the Android world, after being a developer (non-mobile) for quite some time now.  
In your opinion, what are some of the bigger challenges that back-end application Java developers might face when they move to Android development?  Would you say most of the issues might be from a mindset perspective?  Would your book help with that?

Thanks,
Jasminka

[David Griffiths]

Jasminka Mancevska wrote:Hi Dawn and David,  

I am looking forward to try myself in the Android world, after being a developer (non-mobile) for quite some time now.  
In your opinion, what are some of the bigger challenges that back-end application Java developers might face when they move to Android development?  Would you say most of the issues might be from a mindset perspective?  Would your book help with that?

Thanks,
Jasminka

Hello Jasminka,

Great question. You should find that the transition from back-end to Android is actually pretty straightforward. Java was, after all, originally intended for use of small devices. In that sense, Android is probably closer to the original Java vision than Java server code. The language will be virtually the same. At the moment Java 8 coding is not that common in Android, so you might find that you'll miss some of the functional stuff from Java, although that is likely to change over the next year. The biggest difficulty is likely to be in UI design. Android does some slightly odd things, like completely recreating the screen object every time you rotate the screen. That kind of thing is likely to be surprising the first time it causes a bug in your code.

But in general, if you know Java, you should feel right at home in Android.

Welcome home :-)

D+D

[Jasminka Mancevska]

That's great to hear.  Thank you for your prompt answer.

Jasminka