Switch to a Java Android course?

9 months ago by masculineduckling to c/kotlin

I started the official Android course with Kotlin and was very pleased with the first unit which went over the basics of Kotlin. It was very beginner friendly, written well, and a lot of reminders and general hand holding. I also have some prior coding experience.

The second unit on Android was the complete opposite experience. It was written by a non-native English speaker and the instructions were dry and not very clear.

I now understand why some people warned that learning Kotlin means fewer resources to learn from compared to Java where there are many to choose from. So it's made me consider: should I switch to a Java Android course with the hope that the Android portion of the course will be better developed? Or should I just stick with the Kotlin course because it will be difficult either way?

Also, has anyone else new to coding/android development had success learning with the official Kotlin Android course?

chrash0 11 points 9 months ago

Kotlin has been the right way to make Android apps for 5 years now and a first class citizen for far longer. Kotlin Compose has been the right way to make UI on Android for about 3 years. going back to Java will ultimately hurt you and will be coming from either a very opinionated, controversial source or something that is way out of date.

i started on Android in 2012, and Kotlin + Compose is just better. also, tutorials are a dime a dozen since they’re generally AI slop or just recreations of the official docs. i hesitate to take a “git gud” stance, but learning from official docs is a career skill.

speaking of AI slop, i don’t think it’s the worst idea to get an LLM to guide the learning experience. use it like a calculator: it’s not an excuse not to learn; it’s a tool to help you learn, even if it will to some extent do the work for you.

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mannycalavera 1 point 9 months ago

Part of being a good engineer is reading and understanding unclear requirements to make them something that can be worked with and transformed into actual positive business outputs. I'm not saying that the badly written courses are attempting to teach you that but if you're stumbling at this hurdle then that doesn't bode well for a future in software engineering. There's way more resources to teach yourself Kotlin and Android development. You need to actively find these out and synthesise them into your learning. To be honest if you told me this on an interview I would simply not hire you because you're admitting the slightest ambiguity will make you unproductive and want to do different things.

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0_o7 1 point 9 months ago

Have you looked into flutter? It's way easier to get into and the performance isn't bad. And you can implement kotlin code in your flutter apps as required.

I started with java, then kotlin but I code with flutter now and I like the ease of use. It isn't perfect and there's some getting used to but it's beginner friendly and I hope big breaking changes are behind.

There's some extra baggage and performance loss but if you're just starting off and want to explore your ideas and get it out there to see if it is worth expanding on, I recommend flutter.

If your idea catches on and gets a user/customer base, you can start turning it into native application in the future.

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