Head First Android Development: A Brain-Friendly Guide 2nd Edition

Good

This is a book for beginners. A lot of books give too much information or are too technical, and the important bits get lost in a sea of dense text. This book is huge, but not dense. That is because it spreads the details out in a way that is easy to follow, even if you don't read it closely. It's more like a set of tutorials laid out in simple language and make excellent use of white space on the pages, bold print to draw your eye to the key pieces of code, and simple "hand written" annotations with arrows drawn to show you exactly what is going on. It engages your brain in multiple ways, and reinforces the information you need to know in a refreshingly clever way.Android is an enormous framework of pieces for you to stitch together into your own creation, and it can be overwhelming for a beginner. This book will get you heading in the right direction.

It is a good book to learn from, but be mindful of how quickly tech changes year by year. Head First is coming out with the 3rd edition of Android Development in Nov. of 20201, and I highly recommend waiting for that book to be released. There is an entire chapter in the 2nd edition that is useless considering that Support Library this book is using has now been deprecated.

Picking this book was a very smart move. The main reason is that this book provides you with all the most important subjects you need to start developing your app. The most frustrating thing to me is spent a lot of time focusing on not critical stuff. To dive deeper you will need to research a lot the internet, StackOverflow, etc.It took me 2 months to get to a point now where I have my app first version. about 1 month for reading and another month for developing and while using this book as a reference.I recommend not to start without having a good understanding of java, but you certainly don't have to be an expert. anyway, you will need to know some java subjects to understand stuff here.While on the downside I didn't like the fact that there isn't a small chapter on signing APK, versioning and publishing your app and the book talks about it briefly at the end of the book.I am looking to buy the SWIFT 4 book as soon as it comes out! :)

This book is amazing! I learnt a lot, but the hardcopy version is not bound together very well. The pages are coming off, and i wish i had just bought the kindle version or something.

Very nice book for beginning Android programming. Make sure you buy the latest edition or the code may not work. It is true that there are many pages that are wasted but for the beginner it is nice to be step through things slowly. You need to know some Java to lean this. This is a better starter book than the Big Nerd Ranch book. That book is also good but codes things in a rather complicated manner and has complicated code projects.

In a 1700-plus page book, I expected a good tutorial on using the graphics layout drag and drop editor mode of Android Studio. But, the entire book is comprised of examples of XML coding all the GUI elements of an app. The layout editor does just about all that for you, but the book has about 2 or 3 pages out of 1700 describing a simple use of the GUI layout editor! The layout editor is extremely useful and expedites one's GUI development, but it has myriad options, so I wanted an in-depth tutorial. Not there. All the book's GUI lessons are comprised of cut and paste XML code. It's as if the authors never saw the layout design view editor. I returned the book after 4 days. Regrettably, I must add that I have not found a book that teaches the GUI editor in detail . I found more useful nfo by Googling and slogging thru the Android developers documentation.

This book is super intuitive to read. The perfect book for beginners, as it explains concepts in an easy to grasp method. You should know basic java before you read this book as a prerequisite. I like the practical code-along examples that the book provides.