Preface

Mobile development has been a market with huge potential since the very beginning, but there have been some issues in the past, ranging from content discovery, where to download apps and games, to the prohibitive costs of data in some countries. With the launch of iPhone and the App Store, the whole market skyrocketed. Google followed up and introduced Android and the Google Play Store. Today, we all know where we can find applications for our smartphone and flat data rates or, at least, very accessible data plans are more common in many countries. In addition, many companies transformed their operating model to become mobile first and, nowadays, it is very strange not to find a mobile application of a service or business that has direct interaction with consumers that provides services to their employees and, obviously, those companies whose whole business model is based on a mobile application.

The aim of this book is to introduce newcomers to Android development and, for those that are already experienced, to brush up on some concepts and maybe add some final touches to their applications. We will cover several aspects of Android development, ranging from the very basics to the more advanced subjects. We will briefly explain the foundations, as it is important to understand how everything works, but we will focus more on open source and broadly used third-party libraries. Android has a very rich, open source, and extensively tested library ecosystem, and it will be a mistake not to take advantage of it. These libraries are widely used by many of the most downloaded apps in Google Play and knowing how they work is becoming crucial, both to speed up the development time and to perform well in job interviews. Do not forget to contribute back to the community!