Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Review of "Programing Android" by Zigurd Mednieks

Programming AndroidProgramming Android by Zigurd Mednieks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Want to get into Android programming? What better than a book called Programming Android from O'Reilly! :) This is a GREAT resource! The book is well-organized into sections, giving you information on how to setup your environment all the way up to handling more recent topics like NFC.

I find that the style of the book works well as a reference to look up roughly how you would do something, like setup NFC P2P or setup some OpenGL graphics, as well as a running tutorial to read through to learn how things work. The book is full of code examples (available online too) and valuable information on how to properly implement your applications (see Chapter 10 - A Framework for a Well-Behaved Application).

Reading this book enlightened me to a great way to implement one of my projects without worrying about certain runtime issues. Originally I had considered putting logic in a run loop in the application and shutdown when it left... but that wouldn't work out right when I needed information live, but cached information would be good. The book enlightened me to "Content Providers" which using a service could provide the necessary cache I needed. Later on I discovered that the service by itself would solve my problem, but without the reading, I wouldn't have stumbled upon the path as quickly!

The author, Zigurd Mednieks, has done a great job in writing a strong book on Android to compliment the vast amount of information available through Google's documentation. I suggest you get this book, especially the eBook form - you can easily search through and find references / copy code-bits.

The eBook format of this book was provided free through O'Reilly's Blogger Review program, you can purchase the book from the O'Reilly book store at: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920023005.do
You can support this blog by purchasing the book through Amazon at: Programming Android
View all my reviews