DigitalFriend Blog

December 2012

'Now' is the best time to learn Java on Android

Mon, 3 Dec 2012 23:55:01 +1000

By: gosh'at'DigitalFriend.org (Steve Goschnick)

Why is 'now' the very best time to learn Java on Android? Let me count the reasons:

Android has quickly become the premier platform for the Java programming language, with regard to making applications with modern user interfaces, on touch-screen devices, including smartphones and tablets. In doing so, the Android UI is now the Java UI that app designers and programmers should target wrt enhancing their skills.

The User Interface and Java

Java has long been a great language to learn the art of programming, but, until Android, there was not a mass-market of high-resolution screen devices that embraced Java as the primary language to program it. While Java has been around since 1996, Google only popularised Android smartphones as late as 2009 - arriving first on the HTC Magic smartphone with a 480x320 pixel screen (HVGA, matching the iPhone3 screen-resolution wise). Now, Android dominates smart-phone sales worldwide, and they are gaining ground daily in the touch tablet/device market too:

Conclusion

So, if you take into consideration these five things together:

  1. Android consumer devices really represent the first mainstream OS coupled with decent screen resolutions, where Java is the primary programming language;
  2. The recentness of Googles legal victory regarding how it uses the open Java programming language within Android;
  3. The fact that Android V4 is really the first mature version of Android destined for all-sorts of devices replete with a newly published set of UI Design Guidelines;
  4. The fact that over 1 million+ newly purchased Android devices are turned on each and every day (with built-in access to app stores);
  5. That the vast majority of universities and training organisations teach Java either on backend servers (i.e. no user-interface, or using web-page interfaces), or on the desktop (e.g. Swing applications) - if at all.

Then you should appreciate what most people in ICT right now do not: that now really is the best time to learn Java on Android.

[P.S. If your university is teaching Java on Android, drop me a line and a link, and I'll give it a mention here.]

 

 

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