Preface

I started learning about Android back in 2009. Android version 1.5 had just been released, and it showed a lot of potential.

In July 2009, thanks to a friend living in Australia, I got my first Android-powered device, an HTC Magic with Android version 1.5. To be honest, it processed more slowly than I expected, but I started testing the APIs and creating apps that I wanted to have on my cell phone. I sensed that Android would get a lot of attention and I knew that if I managed to create an application, it would be available to a lot of people.

I was proved right—not long afterward, there was a kick-off for Android development, which soon grew bigger and bigger. Suddenly a lot of tools and third-party libraries supporting the Android platform emerged—everything from game frameworks, like cocos2d-x, to build systems, like Apache Maven.

In November 2010 I was asked to review a book from Manning Publications called Android in Practice (www.manning.com/collins/). Delving deep into Manning’s work, it occurred to me that I could write a book about Android development using a different approach. I wanted to imitate Joshua Bloch’s Effective Java (www.amazon.com/Effective-Java-2nd-Joshua-Bloch/dp/0321356683), providing tips and patterns I had learned over all my years of developing for the Android platform.