This article is part of the Android August series, in which I’m writing an Android development a day during the month of August 2021.
While you can buy Android video courses on Udemy and other places, don’t forget that there’s a good selection of great video tutorials for free. These are my current favorites.
If you’re new to Android development, chances are that you’ll actually be learning not one, but two different things simultaneously: the Android framework and the Kotlin programming language.
If you want a solid grasp of Kotlin, I can’t thnk of a better YouTube video than Donn Felker’s Kotlin for Beginners. The video is almost 10 hours long, but it’s quite thorough. Even experienced developers who are new to Kotlin will find it helpful:
My current favorite Android tutorial video on YouTube is Philipp Lackner’s Build a Simple Android App, which walks you through the process of building a “to-do list” app in just over an hour:
Straight from the Google mothership, Android Basics in Kotlin is a YouTube video-based course that tries to walk the middle road between teaching Android development and teaching Kotlin. It does this by having you build a set of apps.
If you’re into certifications, this course is designed to prepare you for the Associate Android Developer certification exam. Units 1 through 5 of the course are available, and there’s a Unit 6 coming soon!
I’ll admit it. I’ve been watching my new phone — a RedMagic 6R Android gaming phone, which I wrote about in this article — travel from the factory in Hong Kong all the way to my house in Tampa.
As I write this, it landed in FedEx’s Memphis facility two hours ago.
This article is part of the Android August series, in which I’m writing an Android development-related article every day during the month of August 2021.
If you’re a regular podcast listener and an Android developer (or an aspiring Android developer), you’ll want to check out these podcasts. Not only are they informative, but they’re also active, or in other words, they’re still in the process of making more episodes. Add them to your playlist and deepen your Android knowledge!
This is probably the longest-running Android developer podcasts. Hosted by Nick and Romain, two developers from the Android engineering team, Android Developers Backstage covers topics of interest to Android programmers, with in-depth discussions and interviews with engineers on the Android team at Google.
Jetpack Compose, the reactive data-driven UI toolkit for Android, has finally hit the 1.0 stage, and it’s included in the “Arctic Fox” release of Android Studio. It’s the hot new thing, and Android Developers Backstage is right on top of it, with several recent episodes covering different aspects of Jetpack Compose.
For sheer volume of developer-focused episodes and topics, you can’t beat Fragmented, the Android-centric developer podcast hosted by Donn Felker and Kaushik Gopal. While they do talk a lot about Android, they focus on all sorts of topics that are relevant to software developers of all stripes, such as the importance of having a growth mindset, the importance of code conventions, the three things every developer needs to be able to do, growing an online presence in the software industry, and more.
I’m sure that there are still lots of Android developers out there who prefer to code in Java, but as far as I’m concered, Kotlin is the Android programming language. And wouldn’t you know it — there is a Kotlin programming podcast, and it comes straight from the source: JetBrains, the dev tool vendor behind Android Studio and Kotlin. Better still, it’s hosted by Kotlin’s best advocate, Hadi Hariri, JetBrains’ VP of Developer Advocacy.
This is the official Android developer podcast, put together by the Android team. It provides summaries of what the Android team has been up to that you, the developer should know about. It covers library and platform releases, articles, videos, podcasts, samples, code labs — whatever seems relevant and interesting for Android developers.
Lately, there’ve been a number of episodes covering the beta version of the upcoming Android 12.
“All About Android” is aptly named: For over 500 episodes, they’ve been covering all sorts of Android developments — “the biggest news, freshest hardware, best apps and geekiest how-tos”.
Samsung, the people behind what’s considered to be the Android flagship phone, have a developer podcast: POW! The Samsung Developers Podcast. It’s hosted Samsung senior developer evangelist Tony Morelan, Sr..
This is the official podcast of my friends at RayWenderlich.com, the premier mobile development tutorial site. RayWenderlich.com started off as an iOS dev tutorial site (it’s how I learned), but they’ve expanded to cover Android, Unity, and Flutter development, and so has the podcast.
ACE provides training and paid experience by partnering people age 18 through 24 with local employer for paid apprenticeships in areas including:
Business administration
Coding
Cybersecurity
Digital marketing
This orientation will cover the details of the ACE program, show you how to apply, and give you a chance to ask questions. If you’re looking for work in fields that provide lots of opportunity, good pay, and great prospects for your future, you don’t want to miss this — make sure that you (or a young person whose future you care about) sign up for this event!
This article is part of the Android August series, in which I’m writing an Android development-related article every day during the month of August 2021.
This weekend, I placed an order for a RedMagic 6R from Nubia, the high-end branch of ZTE who’ve been making some interesting phones specifically for gaming. For US$500, you get the same processors as those in Samsung’s flagship phone, the Galaxy S21…
Want to know more about the RedMagic 6R? Here’s GSMArena’s video review:
My father-in-law needed an upgrade from his flip phone from the pleistocene epoch, so I decided to give him my current phone, a Moto One Hyper, and get a new one. The original plan was to go with my go-to Android phone vendor, Motorola (who typically give great bang for the buck), and get the G100.
Because I’m not in a complete hurry to get the phone and because I have some serious writing and editing to do this week and don’t want to be distracted by sweet new gear, I decided to be true to my Asian-ness and save about $80 by ordering the phone and a protective case directly from Nubia/ZTE rather than going through Amazon Prime and getting it the next day.
(Besides, I didn’t feel like buying Jeff Bezos more midlife crisis spaceship parts today.)
Tap to view at full size.
The phone left the warehouse in Yuen Long (a town in Hong Kong’s western New Territories), and is currently making its way to me in Tampa via FedEx.
What will I do with a gaming phone? Build apps for it with my newly-purchased gaming laptop by getting more familiar with this development tool:
I’ll post an unboxing video and other notes when it arrives. Watch this space!
This article is part of the Android August series, in which I’m writing an Android development-related article every day during the month of August 2021.
While you can learn Android programming alone and on your own, it’s often helpful to learn in a group setting, where you can ask questions, share ideas, and tackle problems together. That’s where Android Study Jams come in.
Android Study Jams are community events where people get together to learn how to build Android apps. Android Study Jam participants work through a curriculum created by Google that allows everyone to work at their own pace. These Jams are led by facilitators who organize events in their area and invite others to join and learn.
GDG SunCoast is the Tampa Bay area Google Developer Group, a group for developers and aspiring developers who are interested in Google’s developer technology. It covers everything developer-y that Google offers, such as Android, Java & Kotlin, Firebase, Progressive Web Apps with Polymer, Angular web apps, Google Cloud Platform), machine learning with TensorFlow and more.
GDG Suncoast has a regular online Android Study Jams session, and there’s one every Wednesday evening in August! They’re online, and they’re free — all you need is a computer that can run Android Studio (a Windows machine made in the last 5 to 6 years, or a Mac made in the last 10 years can do it). Check out their Meetup page, set aside an hour on Wednesday evenings, and learn some Android programming!
Here’s your weekly list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events — plus a little area tech news — for Tampa Bay and surrounding areas for the week of Monday, August 2 through Sunday, August 8, 2021.
This is a weekly service from Tampa Bay’s tech blog, Global Nerdy! For the past four years, I’ve been compiling a list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events happening in Tampa Bay and surrounding areas. There’s a lot going on in our scene here in “The Other Bay Area, on the Other West Coast”!
This list includes events that would be of interest to techies, nerds, and entrepreneurs. It includes (but isn’t limited to) events that fall under the category of:
Programming, DevOps, systems administration, and testing
Tech project management / agile processes
Video, board, and role-playing games
Book, philosophy, and discussion clubs
Tech, business, and entrepreneur networking events
Toastmasters (because nerds really need to up their presentation game)
Sci-fi, fantasy, and other genre fandoms
Anything I deem geeky
I’m moving this list to Fridays so that you’ve got more time to plan for the upcoming week. Let me know if this change works for you (or if it doesn’t)!
By “Tampa Bay and surrounding areas”, this list covers events that originate or are aimed at the area within 100 miles of the Port of Tampa. At the very least, that includes the cities of Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Clearwater, but as far north as Ocala, as far south as Fort Myers, and includes Orlando and its surrounding cities.
CBRE Group is the world’s largest commercial real estate services company, and as such, they follow the people who spend lots of money on office space. Remote work notwithstanding, a lot of high-value office space is used by tech, which is why they produce an annual “Scoring Tech Talent” report. The 2021 edition of this report came out on July 12th, and you can download it here.
Out of the 50 largest tech talent markets in the U.S. and Canada, Tampa Bay ranked at the number 10 spot.
Millennials — and remember, the oldest in that cohort are now in their early 40s — are seen as fueling the growth of tech talent, and Tampa Bay has seen a 14.5% increase in their number since 2014, which accounts for over 84,000 people.
In the report, Tampa Bay’s position dropped to 33 (out of 50 metros) from the previous year’s standing, 29th.
Washlava, the Tampa-based “smart laundromat” company whose service makes it possible to reserve and pay for laundromat washers and dryers from a mobile app, closed $9 million in recapitalization and equity financing from Tampa’s David A. Straz Jr. Foundation and Jacksonville’s Monterey Private Capital. The press release for this funding also includes news that they’re taking on Tommy Hart as interim CEO as founder/CEO Todd Belveal is leaving the company.
If you’d like to get this list in your email inbox every week, enter your email address below. You’ll only be emailed once a week, and the email will contain this list, plus links to any interesting news, upcoming events, and tech articles. Join the Tampa Bay Tech Events list and always be informed of what’s coming up in Tampa Bay!
