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Android Programming for Beginners

Android Programming for Beginners - Fourth Edition

By : John Horton
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Android Programming for Beginners

Android Programming for Beginners

By: John Horton

Overview of this book

Modern Android development has evolved rapidly, with Kotlin and Jetpack Compose becoming the standard tools for building powerful mobile applications. Android Programming for Beginners provides a practical introduction for readers with little or no coding experience. Rather than overwhelming you with theory, the book teaches concepts gradually through hands-on experimentation and small, focused apps that reinforce core programming fundamentals. You will begin by learning Kotlin essentials including variables, loops, functions, lambdas, collections, and object-oriented programming before moving into Android Studio and Jetpack Compose. As your skills grow, you will create interactive projects ranging from UI layouts and games to multimedia and database-driven applications. Along the way, you will explore Android development techniques such as state management, navigation, Material Design, Room databases, Canvas drawing, and responsive layouts. To help future-proof your workflow, each chapter also includes optional AI-assisted programming exercises that show how modern coding tools can support experimentation, accelerate development, and deepen understanding. By the end of the book, you will have built a portfolio of Android apps and gained the confidence to continue toward advanced mobile development projects independently.
Table of Contents (36 chapters)
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1
Part 1: Kotlin & Jetpack Compose Basics
11
Part 2: Data Structures, Kotlin Fundamentals & More Advanced UIs
20
Part 3: Object-Oriented Programming & Building More Advanced Apps
29
Part 4: Vibe Coding & Learning with AI
34
Other Books You May Enjoy
35
Index

More function basics

There is much to learn about functions. Even after this chapter, we will continually encounter new scenarios involving functions throughout the rest of the book, not to mention the entire next chapter devoted to composable functions. What follows are some more commonly used function basics.

TODO in functions

Sometimes we will want to plan the structure of the functions in our app by adding all the headers and coming back to implement the bodies (the code that does the work) later. At the same time, we want our code to compile so we can test other areas of the app. The TODO keyword lets us add headers for unimplemented functions. Take a look at this code.

fun calculateDiscount(price: Double): Double {
    TODO("Implement discount calculation logic")
}

The preceding function compiles successfully, but when it is called, it throws a NotImplementedError, which crashes the app unless you handle it, including the message Implement discount calculation logic. We...

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Android Programming for Beginners
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