Jerome DiMarzio - Beginning Android Programming with Android Studio

Beginning Android Programming with Android Studio

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ISBN: 978-1-118-70559-9

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ISBN: 978-1-119-19609-9 (ebk)

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To my children Christian, Sophia, and Giovanni;
Katie, Sarah, and Joe; and my love Jennifer.

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J. F. DIMARZIO began developing computer programsspecifically gamesin 1984 as a wide-eyed, curious child of the Atari age. Starting on the TRS-80 Color Computer II, in BASIC, he wrote several small text-based games and simple inventory applications. After leaving the Music program at the University of Massachusetts, J. F. moved into professional computer development; working for the United States Department of Defense, Walt Disney Imagineering, TechData, and The Walt Disney Company. In 2008, he started developing apps on the newly introduced Android platform (then on version 0.8). He has had 14 books published to date, 7 of which are on Android and Android game development.

CHD (SHOD) DARBY is an author, instructor, and speaker in the Java development world. As a recognized authority on Java applications and architectures, he has presented technical sessions at software development conferences worldwide (in the U.S., U.K., India, Italy, Russia, Netherlands, Singapore, Japan, and Australia). In his 20 years as a professional software architect, he's had the opportunity to work for Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Merck, Boeing, Red Hat, and a handful of startup companies.

Chd is a contributing author to several Java books, including Professional Java E-Commerce (Wrox Press), Beginning Java Networking (Wrox Press), and XML and Web Services Unleashed (Sams Publishing). Chd has Java certifications from Oracle and IBM. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

J. F. DIMARZIO would like to thank Charlotte Kughen, Jim Minatel, Rick Kughen, and the team at John Wiley & Sons publishing; and Stacey Czarnowski, Katrina Bevan, and the team at Studio B.

I first started playing with the Android Software Development Kit (SDK) before it was officially released as version 0.8. Back then, the tools were unpolished, the application programming interfaces (APIs) in the SDK were unstable, and the documentation was sparse. Android is now one of the most popular mobile operating systems in the world.

Every day, more developers are trying Android development using Android Studio, either as a hobby or professionally. The current challenge for many beginning developers who want to move into the exciting world of android development is trying to determine where to start.

It was with this challenge in mind that I was motivated to write this book, one that could benefit beginning Android programmers and enable them to write progressively more sophisticated applications.

This book is written to help jump-start beginning Android developers, covering the necessary topics in a linear manner so that you can build on your knowledge without being overwhelmed by the details. I adopt the philosophy that the best way to learn is by doing. The numerous Try It Out sections in each chapter first show you how to build something. Then the follow-up How It Works sections explain how everything works. I have also taken this opportunity to further improve the previous edition of this book by addressing feedback from readers and adding additional topics that are important to beginning Android developers.