2017 Android Developer Summer Binge List

by Chiu-Ki Chan Jake Wharton Francisco Estevez Eric Maxwell Kevin Pelgrims Nicolas Roard Yash Prabhu Huyen Tue Dao Yiğit Boyar Michael Yotive

Jun 22 2017

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Summer has begun!!! Now is a great time to get outdoors, enjoy the weather, and sharpen your Android skills! We’ve picked some of the best content from this past year to make it easy.

1 – Become an Android Expert
2 – Exploring RxJava 2
3 – Kotlin
4 – Android Architecture Components + Realm
5 – Data Binding
6 – Constraint Layout
7 – Material Design
8 – Custom Views
9 – RecyclerView
10 – Android Fragments in 2017

Become an Android Expert

Ever wish you were an Android Expert, like one of those Keynote presenters you see on stage. It’s not as difficult as you think. Android Expert Chiu Ki Chan teaches you how.

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Exploring RxJava 2

Now that you’re an expert. You’ll love “Exploring RxJava 2 for Android” with Jake Wharton. Observable creation, subscription management, and backpressure have all been completely overhauled in this new version. Jake will speak about the what’s and why’s of those change and teach you how both libraries and applications can migrate to supporting RxJava 2 so you can interop between the two versions.

Kotlin

Speaking of back pressure, if you haven’t started learning Kotlin. Now would be a great time! Google just announced Kotlin as an official on Android at IO 2017!! 🎉 Among the many things that makes Kotlin awesome is it’s richer type system. Paco Estevez covers everything you need to know about the Kotlin type system including (classes, data, objects, enums, optionals, functions and more) in this talk.

Android Architecture Components + Realm

Kotlin wasn’t the only big announcement. Google also made a big splash announcing Google Architecture Components. Get up to speed on the concepts of ViewModels, LiveData, Lifecycle, Room and how you can use Google Architecture Components with Realm in this primer by Eric Maxwell.

Data Binding

Now that you’ve supercharged your Android code skills. Let’s move into the UI layer, starting with Data Binding. Learn how to write cleaner apps with less code, using Data binding. If you’re already using Data Binding, you may just be scratching the surface of what it can do. Kevin Pilgrims gives you the basics of data binding, and then quickly moves on to more advanced techniques/functions.

Constraint Layout

You will definitely want to take advantage of the performance gains that Constraint Layout brings to the table. Learn the essentials of Constraint Layout from directly from the source with Nicolas Roard, from the Android Framework team.

Material Design

Performance is great, but you want to provide a beautiful UX too right? Prabh Yash gives you a “Practical Guide to Material Design Implementation for Android”. Learn about the basics of standard UI elements that are used across most apps like Navigation Drawer, Floating Action Button, Tabs, Grids, CardView, RecyclerView and Coordinator Layout as well how to support older versions of Android, using the AppCompat support libraries.

Custom Views

Material design can help you make a beautiful UI/UX with existing Views, but sometimes, you just need to create your own. It’s not for the feint of heart, but it can be totally worth it. Huyen Tue Dao will teach you when and how to use custom Views and ViewGroups efficiently.

RecyclerView

Whew, you’ve put your brain on overdrive! Let’s calm it down with a deeper understanding of RecyclerView & how to optimize efficiency from Yigit Boyer, of the Android Toolkit UI team.

Now for some light reading to smooth out your binge.

Android Fragments in 2017

In this 2017 State of the Union, Michael Yotive gives you a brief history of Fragments, where the industry stands, what Square has to say about Fragments, and what frameworks are out there to simplify fragment development.

Next Up: New Features in Realm Java

About the content

This content has been published here with the express permission of the author.

Chiu-Ki Chan

Chiu-Ki is an Android developer with a passion for speaking and teaching. She has spoken at numerous conferences all over the world, and has been recognized as a Google Developer Expert for her extensive knowledge of Android. She runs her own mobile development company, producing delightful apps such as Monkey Write, Heart Collage, and Fit Cat.

Jake Wharton

Jake Wharton is an Android developer at Square working on Square Cash. For the past 5 years he’s been living with a severe allergy to boilerplate code and bad APIs. He speaks at conferences all around the world to educate more about this terrible plague that afflicts many developers.

Francisco Estevez

Paco Estevez is an Android developer at Facebook by day, and an opensource contributor by night. He’s been an early adopter of new paradigms and techniques in Android, like reactive programming with RxJava or a functional approach to Kotlin.

Eric Maxwell

Eric is an Product Engineer at Realm. He has spent over a decade architecting and developing software for various companies across different industries, including healthcare, insurance, library science, and private aviation. His current focus is training, mentoring, and mobile development. He has developed and taught courses on Java, Android and iOS. When he’s not working, he enjoys time with family, traveling and improv comedy.

Kevin Pelgrims

Kevin is an Android developer and his latest project is Forward, which can be found on Google Play, is meant to help raise money for charity. He is a co-organizer and a regular speaker at the Android developers group in Copenhagen. He maintains several Android apps in his spare time and likes to experiment with server-side technology.

Nicolas Roard

Nicolas worked over the years on various projects at Google, from the HTML5 support in Android Browser, implementing the webview hardware acceleration in Honeycomb, or writing a scalable and non-destructive photo editor in JB/KitKat. After a year building high-speed telemetry systems for robots, he came back to Android, developed ConstraintLayout and now works on the Android Studio layout editor.

Yash Prabhu

Yash Prabhu leads the Android team at DramaFever and has been developing Android apps since 2010. She has spoken at several Android meetups and conferences over the past three years. In her spare time, she volunteers at Girl Develop It Philadelphia, Code For Philadelphia and Google Developers Group Philadelphia as a teaching assistant, instructor, mentor and organizer.

Huyen Tue Dao

Huyen Tue Dao is an Android developer and Google Developer Expert, currently working on the Trello Android app at Atlassian. She is also co-creator of the “Android Dialogs” YouTube channel. Huyen lives in Denver, CO though is often found in the DC Metro area. When she is not up late programming, she is often found up late gaming (video, board, card, anything).

Yiğit Boyar

Yigit works on building UI widgets and improving layout performance as part of Android UI Toolkit Team. Prior to Google, he was the Android Engineering Lead at Path.com where he was mostly focused on building application architecture, real time camera filters and buttery smooth UI performance. He received his bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Middle East Technical University, Turkey.

Michael Yotive

Michael is a Software Developer at Healthy Roster, Inc., a startup located in Dublin, OH. He has been programming professionally for the past decade. When not developing, Michael can be found rocking out at a music venue or at CrossFit.

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