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Best Way to Become Android Developer – A

Complete Roadmap
Difficulty Level : Easy ● Last Updated : 13 Dec, 2022

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Android is an open-source operating system, based on the Linux kernel and used in mobile

devices like smar tphones, tablets, etc. Fur ther, it was developed for smar twatches and

Android T V. Each of them has a specialized inter face. Android has been one of the best-

selling OS for smar tphones. Android OS was developed by Android Inc. which Google

bought in 2005. Various applications like games, music player, camera, etc. are built for

these smar tphones for running on Android. Google Play Store features quite 3.3 million

apps. Today, Android remains dominant on a global scale. Approximately 75% of the world

population prefers using Android as against 15% of iOS. It is an operating system that has a

huge market for apps. 

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It is known to ever yone that how popular is Android nowadays. Now the questions arise are,

Why Android(Decide the Goal First?), how to star t? Where to star t? What topic s one

should cover? etc, etc. Do you need to learn all the concepts from a book or you should go

with some online tutorials or you should learn Android by doing some projects on it? So in

this ar ticle, we are going to discuss all these things in detail.

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Why Android? (Decide the Goal First?)

So before jumping into the complete Roadmap of Android one should have a clear goal in

his/her mind that why he/she wants to learn Android? Is it for your college academic

projects? or is it for your long-term career? or do you want to build your apps to star t your

business? So first make a clear goal. Why do you want to learn Android? For example, if

you want to learn Android for your college Academic projects then it ’s enough to just learn

the beginner things in Android. Similarly, if you want to build your long term career then you

should learn the professional or advanced things also. So it ’s on your hand and it ’s your

decision why you want to learn Android.

How to Learn Android?

In Android, programming is done in two languages JAVA or Kotlin and XML(Extension

Markup Language). The XML file deals with the design, presentation, layouts, blueprint,

etc (as a front-end) while the JAVA or KOTLIN deals with working of buttons, variables,

storing, etc (as a back-end). And the biggest confusion for an Android beginner is which

language to choose between Java and Kotlin? So let me tr y to overcome the confusion

first. 

Java or Kotlin?

Kotlin is the official language for Android App Development Declared by Google  and it is
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the most used language as well. Many of the apps in the Play Store are built with Kotlin and

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it is also the most suppor ted language by Google. Kotlin is fast and easy than java. Kotlin

also include Lot of new features and libraries that is not present in Java. 

Java is the native language used by Android, applications that helps to communicate with

the operating system and  hardware that directly uses Java. This language allows the

creation of any program and suppor ts almost all types of machines, and OS X be it Android,

Windows, or Linux.  Java was developed by Sun Microsystems (now the proper ty of Oracle)

and one can use Microser vices with Java.

Kotlin is a cross-platform programming language that can be used as an alternative to Java

for Android App Development. It has also been declared  “official” language by google .

The only sizable difference is that Kotlin removes one of the features of Java such as null

pointer exceptions. It also removes the use of semicolon at the end of ever y line . In shor t,

Kotlin is much simpler for beginners as  compared to Java and Now most of developer also

shif t from java to Kotlin for Android App Development.

So my recommendation for a beginner is to go with Kotlin . Why Kotlin? Kotlin is

approved by google and Google has already declared Kotlin as a official language .

Kotlin is ver y easy and fast than java and code of kotlin is ver y shor t and neat than

Java.

Learning Resources

There are plenty of resources and videos available online and it ’s confusing for developers

where to star t learning all the concepts. Initially, as a beginner, if you get over whelmed

with so many concepts then don’t be afraid and stop learning. Have patience, explore, and

stay committed to it.

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The best way to learn Android is by developing some baby projects to some

advanced projects.

Some useful learning resource links available at GeeksforGeeks :

Java Programming L anguage 

Kotlin Programming L anguage

XML

Android 

A Roadmap to Learn

Star t with the Over view of Android. Read some android related blogs and also research

some Android-related things. For example read blogs on Introduction to Android

Development, Histor y of Android, Different Versions of Android, and also topic s like Why

Kotlin will replace Java for Android App Development, etc. etc. and make a complete mind

makeup to star t your journey on Android. Make yourself self-motivated to learn Android

and build some awesome projects on Android. Do it regularly and also star t learning one by

one new concept on Android. It will be ver y better to join some workshops or conferences

on Android before you star t your journey. Make your goal clear and move on toward your

goal.

1) Programming

One may consider this step as a prerequisite. Learn these programming languages before

you star t learning Android.

Java Programming L anguage

Kotlin Programming L anguage

Sound Knowledge of XML (Extensible Markup L anguage)

2) Android Studio

It ’s better to know your tools before you are going to use it. Android Studio is the official

Integrated Development Environment for Google’s Android operating system, built on

JetBrains’ IntelliJ IDE A sof tware and designed specifically for Android development.

File Structure :

AndroidManifest.xml file

Java file

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L ayout file

mipmap file

colors.xml file

strings.xml file

styles.xml file

build.gradle(Module: app) file

Android Studio Over view:

Create a new project

Reopen, close, save the project

Create a new activity, classes, drawable resource files

Run the app on AVD of Emulator or in a real device etc.

3) Android Components

There are some necessar y building blocks that an Android application consists of. These

loosely coupled components are bound by the application manifest file which contains a

description of each component and how they interact. 

Activity:

Activity life cycle

Handle Activity State Changes

Understand Tasks and Back Stack

Processes and Application Lifecycle

Ser vices :

Types of Android Ser vices

The Life Cycle of Android Ser vices

Content Provider:

Content URI

Operations in Content Provider

Working of the Content Provider

Creating a Content Provider

Broadcast Receiver:

Implicit Broadcast Exceptions

4) Simple UI Design

Af ter you got an idea about the different components of Android then star t exploring some

simple UI design which is given below.

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Frame

Linear

Relative

Constraint

View Elements :

TextView

EditText

Buttons

ImageView

Intent :

Implicit

Explicit

Intent Filter

5) Complex UI Design

Once you have a command on simple UI design then solely move to the complex UI design

par t such as:

ListView

RecycleVIew

Fragments

Dialogs

Toast

Bottom Sheets

Navigation Drawer

Tabs

Material Design

Some inser ting Animations

6) Storage

In Android, there are three types of the storage system:

Shared Preferences

File System

Database

RoomDB

7) Build

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Debug/ Release Configuration

8) Threading

Threads

Looper

9) Debugging

One of the most impor tant skills of a developer is debugging skills. So the developer must

learn these things:

Exceptions

Error Handling

Logging

Memor y Profiling

10) Memor y Leaks

Cause of memor y leaks

Detecting and fixing memor y leaks

Context

11) Third-Par ty Libraries

Image Loading Libraries

Glide

Picasso

Fresco

COIL

Dependency Injection

Dragger

Networking

Retrofit

Multithreading

Coroutines

Rxjava

12) Android Jetpack

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guidance to help make it quick and easy to build great Android apps. It provides

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common infrastructure code so you can focus on what makes your app unique.

AppCompat librar y

Architecture components,

Animation and transitions

Android Ktx

Navigation

Paging

Slices

WorkManager

13) Android Architecture

The three famous architecture in the Android world are:

MVVM (Model–View–ViewModel)

MVI (Model-View-Intent)

MVP (Model View Presenter)

14) Firebase

FCM (Firebase Cloud Messaging)

Analytic s

Remote Config

App Indexing

15) Unit Testing

Local Unit Testing

Instrumentation Testing

16) Security

Encr ypt / Decr ypt

Proguard

17) App Release

Signed APK

Play Store

18) Keep Practicing and Read Some Android Tips

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“Practice makes a man per fect ” which tells the impor tance of continuous practice in any

subject to learn anything. So keep practicing and read some Android tips such as Tips to

Improve Your Android Development Skills, Tips to Get Your Android App Featured on Google

Play Store, etc. Below is a complete diagrammatical representation of the Android

Roadmap.

111

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Ar ticle Contributed By :

AmiyaRanjanRout
@AmiyaRanjanRout

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Current difficulty : Easy

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Improved By : ayushluthra62, codearcade

Article Tags : android, Technical Scripter 2020, Android, GBlog, Technical Scripter

Practice Tags : Android, Android

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