Comments about O'Reilly Media Programming Android:

I have been programming Java for several years, mostly in a web servlet context, and some of the more recent additions (e.g. annotations and generics) I have spent less time with. The book uses annotations widely and never explains them, contrary to the note on the back of the book which says it will help "Apply advanced Java concepts regardless of your experience with the language".

Similarly, the first real example in the book in the section on Concurrency, on page 144, uses references to resources without ever explaining how one would go about *creating* such resources: in short, a forward dependency (though in a quick glance I could not find anything that *ever* explains how to do that).

And yet the book spends oodles of time telling how to set up the development environment: something appropriate for a beginning book on Android (and those chapters led me to purchase the book, thinking it would be a "ground up" book, but for someone who already had development experience.

The book also spends too much time pontificating on the "right" way to do things.

This is the most disappointing O'Reilly book I have ever purchased, and I have purchased dozens, going way back into the very earliest days.

Unless you are an *experienced* Android developer, do not purchase this book. The book isn't worthless, it just isn't well ordered.

Comments about O'Reilly Media Programming Android:

This is the perfect book for someone like me who already has programming skills coming from other background (web using microsoft technos, .Net, c#) and want to turn to Android development.

This book will show you how to change your old programming habits into good mobile Android programming by understanding the basics of Android so you can then go further and explore by yourself.

Like I said before, if you already have programming skills, this is the perfect book for you.

Comments about O'Reilly Media Programming Android:

I'm impressed that the book continually stresses writing good code, going into static analysis, good orthogonal / separation of concerns, how to deal with concurrency, the fact that so many software contracts are not enforceable by the compiler, that is-a is worse than has-a, etc.

(Sometimes I think the verbosity of things probably works better in printed book form than it does via Safari, where I'm reading it.)

Comments about O'Reilly Media Programming Android:

I purchased this book after reviewing the table of contents, seeing that it covered many of the topics I needed clarification on. Using the Account Manager, best practices for building a Rest client, going in-depth about content providers, services and fragments.

Any further question I have had the author has done a super job answering them.

I am building a location aware Rest client, and the book has gave me the ability to build the app in the best way.

Comments about O'Reilly Media Programming Android:

This book tries to be all things to all people. It starts with lots of detail for the novice, including using development tools, then moves gets into advanced material towards the end.

It worked well for my needs -- starting in on Android without much experience, then having to get specific work done. So I read mostly the novice stuff at the beginning, then referenced the back just to learn about Android's NFC features.

Pretty good book, especially for a first edition.

Comments about O'Reilly Media Programming Android:

When the book does talk about Android, it seems ok. Nothing special, but also not too bad. However, I'm disappointed to have spent so much time flipping past large sections of the book just to avoid the unnecessary coverage of standard stuff every developer should know.

For example, detailed step-by-step instructions on Eclipse... not even that focused on setting it up for Android, but talking about the platform. And standard Java coding practices too. These have both been covered in enough depth in other books and on the web, and I don't think they belong in this book.

Definitely not a complete waste, but knowing what I know now I would've bought a different book.