Vincent Tsen
Posted on July 30, 2022
Ultimate free resources and courses that I find useful while learning Android development as a beginner
After 9 years of not touching Android development, I recently started to pick up this again 9 months ago. I hope it is still not too late for me to start learning all over again.
What is good now compared to the past, is there are a lot of free resources today. These free resources help me to pick up fast. I'm going to share with you what resources are useful for beginners.
Android Basics in Kotlin
This was the first course I took. I like this course because it is very straightforward except for those videos (which are optional anyway). This is the best course that gives you a very quick overview of what Android development is all about.
Learn Kotlin by Example
Since I was new to Kotlin, I think this is the best and quickest way to learn Kotlin. It is good because it gives you examples, allowing you to visualize it instead of reading the boring and lengthy documentation.
The following blog post summarizes the new concept in Kotlin that you can't find in other languages (e.g C++ and C#).
Android Kotlin Developer Nanodegree
I still felt missing at the time. I wanted to learn more, learned something more advance. So enrolled in this Android Kotlin Developer Nanodegreee. It is an expensive course in my opinion.
However, I recommend you do NOT pay for it because all the courses are available for free. In short, the following 2 links should cover all the paid courses:
The following article summarizes what I learned from this course (it is pretty detailed):
Jetpack Compose Pathways
The issue with the Android Kotlin Developer Nanodegree course is it doesn't cover Jetpack Compose. Luckily, this official Jetpack Compose Pathways course is quite complete in my opinion.
To be honest, some concepts are not easy to understand. The crucial ones are recomposition and side effects. Thus, I always refer back to this official Jetpack Compose documentation.
I read the documentation many times. I still read it today, and I encourage you to do so. You will learn new things every time you read, especially when your experience level improves over a period of time.
[Updated - March 17, 2023]: If the Jetpack Compose Pathways doesn't work for you, maybe you consider the Udemy course below but it is NOT free.
Phillip Lackner Youtuber
I follow Phillip Lackner very closely, but I can't catch up with his pace. He posts videos faster than my learning speed!
I suggest you go through all his past videos and look at what skills you want to learn and pay attention to them. I particularly like when he shares best practice implementations, which you can't find from the documentation.
Vincent Tsen - AndroidDev Blog
This is my blog, so I'm self-promoting. I blog when I learn something new or what I think is worth sharing. My goal is to publish one article per week and so far, I'm still able to do it. Hopefully, I can continue to do that...
Good thing is, most of the articles here are very beginner-friendly. Not so good thing is, the articles are probably not very well-structured. For example, what I blog this week probably may not be related to what blog last week.
[Updated - Jan 06, 2023]: Added ChatGPT below because it is a pretty important resource to me now.
ChatGPT by OpenAI
Google used to be my first go-to, but not anymore since the introduction of ChatGPT by OpenAI. Try to ask ChatGPT any Android development question, it gives a pretty good technical answer. The answer is precise and saves your time from browsing around using Google search.
But do keep in mind, the data is usually 1 year old. If the question you ask is related to the most up-to-date information, it won't able to give you the right answer.
Well, it is free and you need to register and sign in. What I don't like is it will ask you to re-sign again from time to time.
Conclusion
I hope you find my little sharing here useful. It is useful for me at least. I know there are other good resources out there that I don't cover. Feel free to share with me.
To be honest, I'm still learning, and I still feel struggle sometimes. If you feel the same, you're not all alone. I just take baby steps at a time, and hopefully I can slowly pick up the skills. Maybe you can do the same.
All the best to you!
Originally published at https://vtsen.hashnode.dev.
Posted on July 30, 2022
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