Kristin Marsicano - Android Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide

• Brian Hardy, who, along with Bill Phillips, had the gusto to bring the very first edition of this book into the world.

• Andrew Bailey, the most intelligent rubber duck we have ever met. You deserve a spot on the list of authors. In addition to writing all the chapters on Jetpack Compose, you were always the first person we reached out to to talk through tough conceptual decisions and figure out the most effective way to explain new concepts. Your architecture and teaching expertise was invaluable in crafting the solutions presented in this book. Your impact is felt throughout its pages.

• Mark Duran, for proposing the updated solution for PhotoGallery and for feedback throughout the process.

• Dave Severns, for his eagle eyes and for providing updated screenshots and solutions for all the projects.

• Anthony Kiniyalocts, Bryan Lindsey, Brandon Himes, Ben Zweber, Ben Bradley, Daniel Cook, Donovan LaDuke, Christian Keur, Michael Yotive, Tony Kazanjian, and Max McKinley. All yall lent your time and expertise to make this the best resource for anyone to learn Android development.

• Desire Johnson, one of our fantastically talented Big Nerd Ranch designers, who whipped together the nifty cheat sheet attached to this book.

• Kar Loong Wang, another of our amazing designers, for his illustrations of pizza and toppings for Coda Pizza and the handcuffs icon for CriminalIntent.

• Eric Maxwell, David Greenhalgh, Josh Skeen, Jeremy Sherman, Jamie Lee, Andrew Marshall, Zack Simon, Jeremy Kliphouse, Lixin Wang, Brett McCormick, and everyone else who has made a contribution to this book over its many editions.

• Our editor, Elizabeth Holaday. The famous beat author William S. Burroughs sometimes wrote by cutting up his work into little pieces, throwing them in the air, and publishing the rearrangement. Without a strong editor like Liz, our confusion and simpleminded excitement may have caused us to resort to such techniques. We are thankful that she was there to impose focus, precision, and clarity on our drafts.

• Ellie Volckhausen, who designed our cover.

• Simone Payment, our proofreader. Thank you for sanding away the remaining rough edges of this book.

• Chris Loper at IntelligentEnglish.com, who designed and produced the print and eBook versions of the book. His DocBook toolchain made life much easier, too.

• Thanks to Aaron Hillegass and the leadership team at Big Nerd Ranch. As a practical matter, it is not possible to do this work without Big Nerd Ranch, the company Aaron founded. Thank you.

As a beginning Android programmer, you face a steep learning curve. Learning Android is like moving to a foreign city: Even if you speak the language, it will not feel like home at first. Everyone around you seems to understand things that you are missing. Things you already knew turn out to be dead wrong in this new context.

Android has a culture. That culture speaks Kotlin or Java (or a bit of both), but knowing Kotlin or Java is not enough. Getting your head around Android requires learning many new ideas and techniques. It helps to have a guide through unfamiliar territory.

That is where we come in. At Big Nerd Ranch, we believe that to be an Android programmer, you must:

This guide will help you do both. We have trained thousands of professional Android programmers using it. We will lead you through writing several Android applications, introducing concepts and techniques as needed. When there are rough spots, or when some things are tricky or obscure, you will face them head on, and we will do our best to explain why things are the way they are.

This approach allows you to put what you have learned into practice in a working app right away rather than learning a lot of theory and then having to figure out how to apply it all later. You will come away with the experience and understanding you need to get going as an Android developer.