Android, Android, Android… It’s everywhere – smartphones, watches, tablets, TVs… Android is getting sexier and more stable with each release and, with a ton of learning material available, this is a great time to start learning how to develop for this platform.

The primary target audience of this article are fresh computer science graduates who are thinking about becoming professional Android developers. Basically, I wanted to write an article that I would have loved to have read 2.5 years ago, when I scored my first paid dev job.

In it, I present a roundup of facts and resources that will give you a clear picture of your future work scope. Start contributing quickly, experiment and enjoy yourself in the process.

Note: consider this post a cheat sheet that you can come back to anytime.

Here at Infinum, we prefer working in Android Studio. A couple of words from my colleague Željko about AS can be found here.

Although a career in development probably sounds awesome, coping with deadlines and client expectations is something you have to live with on a daily basis. Check out this great article by our JavaScript team leader (or dictator, as he likes to be called), in which he touches upon different challenges that await every developer.

I was sitting with our design team for a year (we had a smaller office back then and I was moved there with another colleague to handle a two-man project). During that period I started paying attention to the problems/challenges that designers have to cope with.

This helped me broaden my perspective and start seeing new stuff, like “where on earth is that pixel going”, “Oh no, you didn’t use that color/font”, etc.

Paying attention to design details (UI/UX) will make you a better developer overall because you’ll get a better understanding of the product development process as a whole.

You become more creative, and creativity is fun and essential for building great apps.

There are problems in software development that tend to repeat themselves. This is why we (developers) create libraries to help us reuse code, simplify the usage and speed up the development process. Here are some of our favorite libraries that we use in almost all of our projects.

At the end of this article, you can find some influential Android players too. I suggest you follow them on Twitter.

Check this out for some implementation tricks: DevBytes.

Here are some of the Android development community hot shots you should keep your eye on. I linked their Twitter accounts because that’s the easiest way to follow their work:

As for the newsletter – subscribe to AndroidWeekly to stay up to date with the hottest news in the development community.

Let’s talk about “Increasing your chances of becoming an Android dev”.

There is a lot of stuff to read, study and try out. Try to find the best theory-practice pair cycle in order to learn quickly and try out new stuff. The right balance is achieved with time and trial and error.

Tasks let you cross out stuff once you’re done and give you a great sense of accomplishment. Plus, creating tasks will improve your analytical skills over time and you will get much better at structuring work and scheduling time. Prioritize work. You’ll improve with time.

If you accomplish something great one day, acknowledge that as well. Don’t write down only failures. The retrospective helps you consume the knowledge that you have acquired and reflect on it in a proper and constructive way.

Retrospective is a great tool, try it out!

Learning to be a developer is a process that doesn’t involve only programming. It’s about finding the right information, optimizing the information flow, applying that info, writing code, trying out different approaches, making mistakes and learning from them. Thus, gaining experience all the time and iterating in the learning process.

Follow the instructions above and increase your chances of staying ”in the flow”.

Good luck!

Follow me on Twitter: @vitongs