Dream a little said
This book was clearly written for seasoned developers. However, other books in this series are far more understandable. I'm really not sure why I did not like this book at all. I'll try to narrow it down. First, the writing style is not very engaging. It's also full of jargon that is never defined. For example, he uses the term URI, which has several component parts that he never defines. Worse, most of the code that he gives you to follow is never explained, at all. Not annotating code and using terms that you have never defined are a very bad trait. Third, alot of the material is a paraphrase of the android development documents, and there is really no new insight here. I think the core issue here is that we look for books not to sound like esoteric, terse documents, but this is what this book is. You will not learn how to program from this book. The code snippets jump all around and he tries to include everything about Android in this book which makes it seem just too much with incomplete treatment of many topics. I actually found the android tutorials less confusing.
Here is a typical example:
SimpleCursorAdapter
The SimpleCursorAdapter binds Views to cursors returned from
Content Provider queries. You specify an XML layout denition and then bind the value within
each column in the result set, to a View in that layout.
Upon re-reading it slowly and thoughtfully, this explanation does make sense. But we have not gone over content providers yet, and he has not talked about SQL queries with SQLLite in Android yet. Nowhere does he mention this, and again it's more like it's lifted from the android documentation without any explanation. This is an example of the style of writing that you'll be seeing. It's abstract, dense, and drab.
An example of the odd chapter organization is Chapter 5: Intents, broadcast receivers, adapters, and the internet. So we talk about intents and broadcast receivers, then view-related database interaction (which is what ch. 6 is all about), and then network communication (as opposed to putting it in its own chapter). It is like I am learning everything out of order with constant references back and forth (like a to do list example followed by an earthquake example, then going back to a to do list example). This is why I said it's dense and organized like spaghetti with no clear beginning and end.
Morelli Giuseppe said
It seems very good.
The content match what i expected.
It is written good.
Miguel said
El libro en cuestión es un buen punto de partida para desarrolladores que cuentan con cierta experiencia relativa a bases de datos y programacion orientada a objetos.
Si quieres crear aplicaciones para android sin saber POO, Java o BBDD este libro se salta esos peldaños y es posible que sin ciertos conocimientos previos te cueste un poco mas que al resto desarrollar aplicaciones complejas.
Por lo demas, el libro esta a mi juicio muy bien estructurado. Su contenido es interesante y bastante completo aunque deja cosas en el tintero o las cubre muy por encima. Asi mismo algunos ejemplos son excesivamente superficiales u orientados a un caso de uso concreto y muy frecuentemente vamos a tener que pelearnos horas con el javadoc del API o buscando por ahi como hacer una cosa que es en realidad muy insignificante y una vez hayamos logrado cubrirla, maldeciremos por lo sencillo que era y lo poco que costaba incluir un parrafo en el libro explicandolo. No es culpa del autor, el API es extensa y ademas, esta edicion del libro cubre la version 1.1.
Pese a todo, los cambios de la version 1.1 a la 1.5 (en breve 2.0 dicen) no son tan significativos.
Por todo esto, considero que es un gran punto de partida pero no te va a solucionar todos tus problemas, algunas cosas no estan del todo bien explicadas o dejan lugar a dudas. Tendras que buscar en foros, preguntar y consultar el API repetidas veces pero con un poco de dedicacion, cuando cojas el punto y la vision global de Android, el libro solo lo tendras para consultillas muy puntuales.
Personalmente, creo que sirve para iniciar una toma de contacto y como futura referencia rapida e impresa. Es muy util cuando tienes que consultar algo basico pero para cosas mas enrevesads, conviene casi mas mirar el codigo de las aplicaciones de ejemplo que vienen en el JDK de Android.
Eso si, una vez cuasi leido, practicado y asimilado el contenido del libro, ya estas en condiciones de programar para Android a un nivel muy decente.
Como con todo, si dispones de los recursos suficientes: Este libro + JDK de Android (Javadoc, emulador, ejemplos y extensiones de eclipse) + internet (foros y blogs de desarrolladores) + (tiempo, ganas e ilusion) = sin problemas.
Allison M. Perkel said
I really wanted to like this book more - at times the information is really good, like the "working in the background" section. However most of the book feels like bits and pieces were cut and pasted into place. Thus author seems to repeat himself often, especially early on. What's worse, the repetition doesn't reinforce any major points of the platform either. I'm left guessing that the book was rushed to print before it was fully edited.
There is some good information here though. And this gives a solid glossing over many of the major themes of Android - which makes this a decent compendium. So if you are looking for an overview of simple GUI development, general, small applications, and some talk about background processes and communications and some of the hardware you could do a lot worse.
However, you could also go to the Android development website and get the same information there as well.
M. Labowicz said
I hadn't programmed in a while, and this well-written book helped me get up to speed on the world of Android in no time flat!
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