Thoughts on “Professional Android Application Development”

I am by no means a very good critique and haven’t written a book report since high school, but I have wanted to write my impression so far of the book “Professional Android Application Development” by Reto Meier.  First let me say I have great respect for anyone willing to author a book on software development.  Just writing development posts for this blog has been a huge learning curve for me, I don’t pretend to be the best technical writer!

All that being said, I’ve enjoyed the time I have spent reading the PAAD book.  The one thing I appreciate about Reto’s writing is that he adds some really good content in the “Getting Started” chapter.  Usually these types of chapters are for people who are complete beginners and there’s not a lot of new information to be gleaned by people who have completed a couple of applications.  But Reto puts in a bunch of best practices for mobile device development and the Android platform.

I’m not very good at reading technical book cover to cover, I always want to start in on a project or apply the new stuff I’ve learned.  But the first 3 chapters I’ve completed so far have taught me some great new info about Android, and I skipped ahead to chapter 10 to play with some examples Reto uses to write about Gradient Shaders; I’m hoping to use them in a new version of Jumpy.  I’ll also be using his examples on using the Camera API.

I was also surprised to see his section on “Customizing Toasts”.  He’s got a great picture of using a graphic in the place of text for your Toast.  Can’t wait to find a use for that!

Anyway, for what it’s worth, I totally recommend this book  to anyone working with Android, I’m sure you’ll pick up a couple of things.  If you’re new to Java it may be a little much, you may want to pick up an intro to Java book also.