Android Programming for Beginners - Second Edition: Build in-depth, full-featured Android 9 Pie apps starting from zero programming experience 2nd Edition

good

This book starts out great. It gently introduces topics and encourages you to type the examples. The end of the chapter summaries in the first chapters offers guidance and encouragement to continue studying the concepts as they will become easier as you work more with them in the book. I think the first 10 chapters are one of the better introductions to Android.The problem with this book is it tries to cover Java at the same time and well it doesn't cover Java adequately enough to understand the code going on in later chapters especially when generics and inner classes/inheritance is used. This book doesn't address the nuances of scope in inner classes. And without an understanding of generics and collections, usage of Arraylist/List can become murky quickly. I recommend a true Java beginner concurrently study a Java book while going through this book. Herbert Schidlt's Java Beginner's Guide is a good introduction for all the topics used. Java 7 or 8 is fine. Android doesn't use features of Java 9+.The worse chapters are the RecyclerView, JSON and the database. Too much going on and little explanation what's going on behind the scenes and why. The reader is told to just accept not knowing how it works, only that it does work if you code just like the chapter. However, without knowing something about the API, the reader doesn't have much flexibility in implementing a custom solution outside of the example app. A little too much API magic without explanation.The 2nd edition focused too much on games to tie in concepts. I dislike games so I skipped those chapters. I wish the other apps involving gps, maps and the camera were still included in this edition.Overall, the book is good. I learned more than most beginner Android books on the market but there's still so much more to learn and this provided a good step in that direction. By the way, the author is very helpful and open to questions about his books. I've reached out to him several times and he's taken great effort to help with the understanding of concepts.

Although I am only through about a quarter of the book, I am finding that things pretty much work as described. I am finding the IDE slightly different, but the examples work. I think this in itself is a great achievement. So far, no broken code due to printing errors, the code works. I have typed it all in, not used cut and paste. I did not see it mentioned in the book so far, but you really don't have to type all the code. A lot is suggested for you in the IDE, you just need to choose it.This book is easily readable, I think would be even for beginners. I am not a programmer, but have done a little code writing. I think the examples are very good. Creating the first game takes several chapters, and proceeds by small steps. The first few chapters do not produce code on an output device, but do produce debugging code. This lets you learn to use the IDE, find errors, and is very much the way I would choose to use debugging code. That and the comments may be excessive for an experienced programmer, but I think are good for a beginner.I have the kindle version, and am not impressed by that. I would like to write notes on the pages, and it looks like kindle does not let you write free form on the page. You can attach notes, but then they appear as small note boxes on the written text. You need to open them to see what is in them. I should have bought the print version.The book has a number of punctuation errors, mostly misplaced commas. Some words run together, or have a space in the middle of a word. These are obvious, and don't get in the way of learning.I am very impressed that using the book I have been able to get Android Studio set up and running on my Mint 18.3 Linux platform. Also that the examples really work. The Android Studio that I am running is 3.2.1, and the book still applies.

This book means well but is very poorly edited and sample code that you can download does not match the text. In some cases the projects need to be debugged by you in order for them to work. Regardless it is an okay introduction to Android and Java.

I am already a LAMP stack developer wanting to learn Android, I have made it about half way through the book and have given up on it in order to get another book. This one is incomplete, the code in the book does not run, and the projects the book asks you to build do not always work, in fact there are times it asks you to reference files that were never created.The publisher needed to spend way more time editing this book, I regret having purchased it and feel as though my time has been wasted.It would seem as though they are padding the reviews as several of the reviews just say 'Good' Let me assure you, it is not. I am starting over with another manual.

After thumbing through the book, I immediately realized that the content is definitely for an intermediate to advanced user. I'm sure the author is excellent, and all of the information is accurate, but the preface should have warned you with certain assumptions.