ANDROID A PROGRAMMERS GUIDE Reviews

• mashup of existing online google android material

  
  By A3HNRXLMR68XJU on 2008-08-12
  Just received this book. I went over the first seven chapters and am very disappointed. The first seven chapters are nothing more than existing online material with some added textual embellishments. There are also a few chapters with sample code (some of which are from the Google samples) and a few might be original code. This is not recommended.
  
  

• Virtually useless

  
  By AMWGK8115AJZL on 2008-09-22
  I had fairly low expectations from this book as the API is still in a state of flux, so if some of the examples needed tweaking that would have been alright. However, I could not even find any example code on the book's website as advertised on the back cover. This is a 400 page book so I expected to get at least some useful material from it, but the author does not even get past Hello World until over 100 pages. The material after that consists of repetitions of trivial code additions followed by regurgitation of the source. It would appear that the author was just trying to increase the page count with no real valuable content. There is no in-depth discussion of what Activities, Intents, etc. actually are or how they work. After this poor experience I went back to the online help and am finding it vastly more thorough and helpful. I would not recommend this book for any level of developer.
  
  

• avoid at all cost

  
  By A3DRV7O25WEGVL on 2008-10-11
  The author does not even understand Java programming conventions. He used capitalized camel case for method name. But some other methods are using the correct camel case. It's mixed throughout his codes. Also, android_programmers_guide.chapter is his package name. Oh my, coming from an ASP/VB programmer's background certainly hurts here.
  
  Aside from that, the book is shallow, not much interesting stuff. The Google official samples are much better and cleaner!
  
  Stay away at all possible cost!
  
  

• Should Avoid This Aurthor

  
  By A1VLKWZN84YDP1 on 2008-10-22
  The author actually didn't know either Java or Android development. The books is emphasizing many basic Java concept, for example, what is a inner class, what is an interface etc. However, for those real android development, he always says "the sample code is fairly self-explained" etc, so missing the real concept for Android / Java development.
  
  I will avoid this author and his other books in the future. I think at least before writing the books, the author should be familiar with the target and know what's the real topics should be written.
  
  

• Highly Disappointed

  
  By AF1HA38ELM5VB on 2008-09-28
  I was very disappointed by this book. I will admit that the SDK is still being worked on and they just released version 1.0, which is upposed to be locked, a few of the examples won't work and have to be updated.
  
  In addition I found an error around the 8th chapter where the wrong class names are used and would mess up the example.
  
  The biggest problem is what seems to be useless pages with overly simple examples. Chapter 8 is horrible with a simple application and just pasting a bunch of different versions for the same thing. There are plenty of things that aren't needed to be explained, but are anyway ... even though the book states it is to be used by someone with previous programming experience.
  
  Way too simplistic and wordy for anyone who already knows Java.
  
  

• The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development
• Android Essentials (Firstpress)
• Professional Android Application Development
• Hello, Android: Introducing Google's Mobile Development Platform
• iPhone Open Application Development: Write Native Objective-C Applications for the iPhone