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Asked: 2026-05-27T07:13:43+00:00

Question Where can I find really good, thorough and comprehensive Android development instruction that

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Question

Where can I find really good, thorough and comprehensive Android development instruction that goes beyond the basics and ties it all together — with the minimum time investment and almost-zero budget?

Details

Please don’t mistake me — I understand that learning a new platform takes time. I’m just looking to streamline the process a bit. Here’s my situation:

I’ve been a PHP-focused web developer for years, and have built numerous large applications around MVC and enterprise design patterns. I have a small amount of Java, C++, and C# experience — mostly what I learned in school, but that was several years ago.

But now I’ve got to dive in and get up and running building Android applications. I’ve got a couple of apps that really need building, and the timeframe is simply “ASAP”.

I know enough of the basics and I’ve already been through the Hello World and Notepad tutorials on http://developer.android.com, so I really don’t need to start from scratch, but it seems like most of what I’ve found falls into one of two camps:

  1. Very basic tutorials, which spend more time telling you how to set up the environment than actually design a real-world application, or’

  2. Highly specific “how to” content, which is great for handling very specific scenarios, but not great for learning to organize and implement professional quality apps.

What I’m looking for ideally is a tutorial series, a book, or some well-documented sample applications that actually clearly demonstrate the why and how of designing building professional android applications — constructing the model, laying out complex views, etc, without necessarily assuming that I’m a Java expert.

So, any good recommendations ?

UPDATE

To clarify, I’m not a complete moron in this area. I’ve built a couple small Android apps already. The problem is that they’re simple and not at all professional or release-worthy, and I’m really not sure where to start when it comes to learning “the right way”.

All I’m asking for is some very focused tutorials or guidance, ideally geared toward the the professional coming from another platform. I’m NOT asking for someone to magically teach me how to program.

Side-note: If you’re going to down-vote, LEAVE A COMMENT so I at least know what your problem is.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I’ve found these ones rather helpful: CommonsWare Library.

    However the official dev Android portal (http://developer.android.com) with its development guides really provides a great foundation which I’d highly recommend to take as the first source of info. Those guides are just musts.

    UPDATE: Since you come from PHP, then I suspect Android application life-cylce would be a quite new concept for you. Make sure to point additional attention to Process lifecycle and Managing the Activity Lifecycle. There is so many crappy apps written without understanding of that. Android is able to break your mind if you don’t grasp those concepts fully. They are somewhat new in mobile app development, so it takes time to adopt them.

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