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Mark Murphy

The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development Paperback – February 6, 2009

by Mark L. Murphy (Author)

19 ratings

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"Java Programming & Application Development for Google/Open Handset Alliance Mobile Phones & Internet Devices".

Print length

468 pages
Language

English
Publisher

CommonsWare, LLC
Publication date

February 6, 2009
Dimensions

7.52 x 0.94 x 9.25 inches
ISBN-10

0981678009
ISBN-13

978-0981678009
See all details

Editorial Reviews

Review

"extremely well written and easy to follow" --GoogleAndBlog.com (Dec 8, 2008)

Review

"It's a really good book for beginners; it sure beats reading the Google Android SDK docs and trying to make some sense of them...It was enjoyable reading this book, and all the examples are concise and to the point. The author does a great job conveying convoluted concepts simply, and that's the true value of this book, especially to a beginner."

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ CommonsWare, LLC; Revised & enlarged edition (February 6, 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 468 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0981678009
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0981678009
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.54 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.52 x 0.94 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #4,211,575 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #7,749 in Software Development (Books)
- #23,987 in Networking & Cloud Computing

Customer Reviews:
19 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		27%
4 star		17%
3 star		10%
2 star		17%
1 star		30%

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Top reviews from the United States

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David L. Anderson

A busy coders guide to Android development

Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2009

Verified Purchase

For a technical book, it is entertaining to read! The writer's style makes normally boring material interesting. The information presented appears to be accurate.

Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2009

Verified Purchase

This book is better than wading through the online docs, but not by a lot. I didn't like the author's informal voice, and the index is pretty bad. Instead, I'd suggest Professional Android Application Development (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) , which I rely on heavily.

10 people found this helpful

Helpful

Stalker

Obsolete

Reviewed in the United States on September 4, 2016

Verified Purchase

I was too fast for this purchase, though it hung in my wish list for about a year and price drop from $1000 to just 3$. This is obsolete book with targeted SDK version 1.0 whether. There is no use of it.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Matt G.

Indispensable

Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2011

In the last year I have gone from no programming knowledge to writing decent Android applications. I am learning Java as well as Android, SQLite, XML and other technologies. I bring this up because I want to tell people just how awesome all of Mark Murphy's Android books are. I literally have dozens of books on Java and Android including the ones other reviewers have mentioned such as "Hello Android" and "Wrox Professional Android Development". Those books are great but some of the logic -especially in "Hello Android" is a bit above my head at this time, thats not to say others won't do well with it It's just not the best for me. None have come close to teaching me as well as the "Busy Coder's" Books. I recommend using the first "Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development" in conjunction with the "Android Programming Tutorials" book and if your pocketbook can manage spring for all three - the Advanced book as well, To me they are worth their weight in gold. I am a green programming student and I have written apps that are very powerful with the help of these books. -Quest Graves

Helpful

Greg Marsh

Booked switched to electronic distribution, version 5.2 is available for free evaluation download (can save as PDF)

Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2016

I noticed the price was over a $100 for an out of date Android book. I checked the publisher CommonsWare website and found distribution has been switched to an electronic format including PDF. Also, the Four-to-free section of the website provides versions older than fours years for download. At the time of this review, version 5.2 is available for free evaluation download (can save as PDF). I consider the content of the book very good, but lowered the rating of this version due to being out of date.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Michael Sprayberry

Great reference book

Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2010

This book and the series are probably the best books out there. I had read 6 other books and waded through the online reference, but after getting ahold of this book and its associated books I learned so much more and a lot of it comes from how the material is presented. The online reference without a point of reference left me scratching my head after reading these books even though a year old on the shelfs tought me more in a weekend then I learned with other books over 3 months. Online material is so sketchy and usually posted by amatuers that this book really helped to find the problems and solutions that I had never realized.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Kindle Customer

Thorough coverage!

Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2009

I first bought Professional Android Application Development and thought it was pretty good as I went through it. However I realized when I started trying to write my own apps that there were huge areas left uncovered in that book. I turned to the online docs but found them to be very skimpy and had several problems I was just stuck with.

Out of desperation I bought this book and have found its coverage to be much much more detailed and helpful than either the online docs or my first Android book.

I think for people who really want to dig below the surface and do more than just simple toy examples, some additional help is needed and this book seems perfect.

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

S. Lawson

Good, but sparse in some areas

Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2010

I ordered the online subscription, and have to say that the CommonsWare Android books are the most straightforward Android books I have seen. The writing style is good, and the examples are presented very well. I would definitely recommend these to anyone starting out with Android development.

However, one of the main reasons I purchased the books was because I was not sure how to properly handle threading, and background tasks within an Activity, and could not find any sufficient material online. Do I use a Handler, AsyncTask, etc? When do I use one over the other? Now while this is covered in chapter 15, I still feel as though I did not get all my answers, or enough to even make an educated decision. The chapter mentions how the AsyncTask uses three data types, but then proceeds to use null for two of those, thereby not giving me any clue as to how to use them properly.

Also, the discussion of Handlers mentions that both messages and Runnable objects can be used, but only covers Runnables in one small paragraph.

Additionally, the examples used are not realistic at all. I would love to see an example to do a common task, like periodically polling a URL in the background thread and updating the UI.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful