Learnings From 3 Years Of Android Development
By: Amit Shekhar
Tags: AndroidDev, Programming, Mobile App Development, Android App Development, Android

It was 2015 January, Janishar Ali and Amit Shekhar(me) started the Android Development.

As both of us are Civil Engineer graduate. We learned to code from the internet where everyone is very supportive. We learned almost everything from the internet. Then it was time to give back to the community so we started sharing our knowledge through videos and blogs.

In this post, we are going to share the ultimate learnings which we learned the hard way during our journey.

Be ready to experience the ultimate adventure.

These are our learnings which we learned the hard way after 3 years of Android Development.

1. Maintain a coding standard and follow some architecture

When you start the Android Development, you do not maintain the coding standard and do not follow any architecture. After adding more and more features, you start facing the following problems:

Difficulties in the addition of new features.

Introduction of more bugs.

Overall slow development.

These problems can be avoided by following the coding standard and following some architecture in your Android project.

References for learning coding standard and architecture:

2. Read others code

When you start coding, you write what you think is correct. But there can be a case that your code can be improved a lot. Start reading others code to learn the best practices. Believe me, reading and learning from others code is the best way of improving yourself as a software developer. You should read the open-source projects.

Reference for reading others code.

3. Always let your code reviewed by others

You learn more when you get true feedback from others. This applies to the code also. You can improve your way of coding by getting feedback from other developers. So, always let your code reviewed by others.

4. Don’t reinvent the wheel

You should not reinvent the wheel. You should use the already available proven libraries for standard use-cases.

As you know that using third-party libraries in your projects can save you a lot of time and also make the projects bugs-free. The main reason behind is that the open source projects are being developed by the whole community of developers with love. The open source project goes under a huge development and bug fixes. We too love open-source and have created many libraries for Android with love and also received the same from the whole community.

You just have to find the best-fit library based on your use-cases. Reinventing the wheel should be your last resort if any other library does not solve your actual problem.

Reference to find Android libraries.

5. Keep yourself updated with the latest trends in Android Technology

Even if you might not be able to have detailed knowledge about everything, it will always give you an upper hand when you are aware of the latest trends and technology in the Android app development industry.

But always remember you do not have to learn every new thing in order to stay relevant. Just keep yourself updated with the what’s new in Android technology so that you can learn and experiment with those things when required. Again remember, learn and experiment with the new thing only when it is actually required for you.

References to keep yourself updated.

The best way to be updated with the Android technology is to join a community as the community members will keep you updated with the Android latest technology.

Link to join MindOrks Community on Slack.

Link to join MindOrks Group on Facebook.

We continuously share about the latest trends on our publication. Keep visiting our publication.

Link to MindOrks publication.

6. Now it’s time for Kotlin

As Google has already officially declared Kotlin as a first class language for Android.

Why use Kotlin for Android Development?

Concise: Drastically reduce the amount of boilerplate code you need to write.

Drastically reduce the amount of boilerplate code you need to write. Safe: Avoid entire classes of errors such as null pointer exceptions.

Avoid entire classes of errors such as null pointer exceptions. Versatile: Build server-side applications, Android apps or front-end code running in the browser.

Build server-side applications, Android apps or front-end code running in the browser. Interoperable: Leverage existing frameworks and libraries of the JVM with 100% Java Interoperability.

Reference for learning Kotlin.

7. Always add Analytics to your Android Application

Check if you have added the correct analytics at all the places where you had meant. The best way to check is that just think of what data you need and what are the metrics you want to measure, see if you can get those data and metrics from the analytics that you have added or not. If you are able to get all of those then you are good to go.

8. Optimize your Android application

Building an optimized Android app is different from building an Android app. In order to make an optimized Android app, you should optimize your application for some metrics like Frames Per Second, CPU Usage, Memory Usage, Network Traffic, Disk Usage etc.

Reference to optimize the Android application.

9. Optimize your build speed

Long build times slow down your development process. Start optimizing for the build speed.

Reference to optimize your build speed.

10. Do not develop for only one device. Develop for all devices.

Android’s biggest problem is fragmentation. There are a number of different Android devices with different screen sizes and hardware specifications from different device manufacturers who have customized the OS according to their need.

You as a developer need to solve this biggest problem.

References to solve this problem.

11. Introduce GIT in every single project

No matter what project is, introduce GIT in every single project. It helps in improving your workflow. It's good to have a proper track of everything.

Reference to learn GIT.

12. Secure your application as much as you can

As you all know that, any Android app can be easily decompiled, reverse-engineered. It’s your responsibility to make your Android app secure as much as you can. By making your app more secure, you help preserve user trust and device integrity.

Reference to secure your Android App.

13. Learn how the 3rd party libraries work

This is very important to know how the 3rd party libraries work that you are using in your Android application. If you know the internals of a library, you can get the most out of it.

Reference to learn how the 3rd party libraries work:

14. Make your Android application bug-free

Always integrate a crash reporting library like Firebase Crashlytics in your application. Develop the ability to read through the crash reports to evolve a better and bug-free app for the users.

15. Learn the Data Structures

Android Developer should know these Data Structures for Next Interview.

16. Make a habit of exploring and reading

Explore and read about the components that your android app interacts with. Example, understand the backend system, data layer, and other microservices with which your app is communicating.

17. At last, give back to the community

We must accept that whatever we are today, we are because of the awesome Android Community. Few of the best ways to give back to the community are

Write blogs and share your learning.

Start contributing to open-source.

References for writing, submitting the articles and contributing to open-source.