How to become a better Android developer: 7+ bite-sized pro tips

Posted by Enterprise Mobility on December 11th, 2019

Becoming an Android developer is easy, but becoming a doing well Android developer and standing out from the rest is not. It takes a lot of hard work, passion, devotion, and perseverance to become great at this job.

I can't show you any shortcuts, but if you are willing to put in the effort, you will surely get all the achievement you deserve.

To aid you on your quest to become a better Android App developer, I compiled some bite-size pro tips from my knowledge. So whether you have just decided to jump into Android development or have been running as an Android developer for a while now, these tips will be relevant to you.

1. Get more familiar with the Android framework internals

I am not talking about the certification but the actual framework code. I have seen many developers who were afraid to dive deep into the Android framework internals. Don't be one of them. It's amazing how much you can discern when you see how things actually work and how the different pieces fit together properly.

If you need to up your Android game, stop shying away from the inner works of the Android SDK and start befriending it.

2. Get over your fear of missing out

Android is big, very big. You cannot learn it totally end to end in a month or three. And the more you learn, the more you will know how much you don't know. As a beginner, it’s perfectly normal to be afraid that you're missing out on learning crucial information by trying to build things while still in a state of great ignorance, but try to get over it.

3. Start reading a lot more code

Most developers don’t take time to read what other developers are script. And they spend most of their time writing what they previously know.

But that will not help you grow as a full Android developer. The only way to truly become a better developer is to read the excellent code of more knowledgeable developers. You should start looking at other open-source apps and libraries, where you'll discover a lot of coding techniques and feature implementations that you had no idea about before.

4. Consider learning more languages

I am not telling you to learn Spanish or Chinese, obviously. I'm saying you should learn new programming languages. You need to keep yourself efficient with what is happening in the business rather than confining your thinking to the Android space.

This will open up your perspective, inspire new ideas, and help you improve your Android development skills considerably. Make up your mind to learn one new programming language every year.

5. it’s time to learn Java design patterns

I can’t stress enough how important this can be in your Android development career. Whenever you are stuck in trying to solve a critical programming problem, design patterns can be a lifesaver.

You also need to be on the same page with other developers, so that when they are talking about using a Factory, Decorator, or Facade pattern, you instantly know what they mean.

Make a promise to yourself to learn one new design pattern every week until you know most of them.

6. Start contributing to open source

If you have developed a library, plug-in, or other useful piece of code and you're using it in your own app, consider open-sourcing it. There's much to learn in the process of contributing to open-source projects or maintaining your own. It's an excellent crash course in open-source development that will exponentially boost your value as a developer.

If you don’t have anything to open-source, consider checking out other open-source projects that interest you, and fix some bugs, improve the documentation, or write a few tests there.

Even the fewest bit of contribution (such as fixing some grammatical errors in the docs) will be helpful for the project maintainer to keep the project running.

7. Learn clean coding guidelines for Android

You can’t ignore this either, because it's really difficult to maintain the standard coding strategy of Android development when working with developers who don’t write clean code.

It’s not rocket discipline, and it shouldn't take you more than a few hours to learn most of the fundamental Android coding strategy.

Source: https://medium.com/@enterprisemobility.ae/how-to-become-a-better-android-developer-7-bite-sized-pro-tips-57ef88b15190

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