Kotlin for Android Developers: The book

Hi dear reader. Today it’s a very special post, because I’m really happy to announce the release of my first book: Kotlin for Android Developers

Kotlin for Android Developers

Kotlin for Android Developers is a lean publication, which it’s in its early stages, and will grow with your help and ideas.

If you follow this blog, you already know I’m a Kotlin fan. I’ve written about it several times here.

Motivation

I think Kotlin is an awesome language that simplifies Android developers lives a lot. It’s a very simple and direct language, but really powerful. Kotlin brings many aspects of functional programming to Android development. And one of the best features is that it’s highly integrated with our IDE.

I recommend you at least taking a look to my articles about Kotlin and decide by yourself:

Although Kotlin is fully usable today, the first final release is really close, and I’m sure many Android developers will be glad to move to this new language, so I want this book to serve them (and you) as a guide to migrate from Java.

About the book

In this book, I’ll be creating an Android app from ground using Kotlin as the main language. The idea is to learn the language by example, instead of following a typical structure. I’ll be stopping to explain the most interesting concepts and ideas about Kotlin, comparing it with Java 7. This way, you can see what the differences are and which parts of the language will help you speed up your work.

This book is not meant to be a language reference, but a tool for Android developers to learn Kotlin and be able to continue with their own projects by themselves. I’ll be solving many of the typical problems we have to face in our daily lives by making use of the language expressiveness and some other really interesting tools and libraries.

The book is very practical, so it is recommended to follow the examples and the code in front of a computer and try everything it’s suggested. You could, however, take a first read to get a broad idea and then dive into practice.

As you could read before, this is a lean publication. This means that the book is written and progresses with you. I’ll continually write new content and review the existing based on your comments and your suggestions. In the end, it will also be your book. I want this book to be the perfect tool for Android developers, and as such, all the help and ideas will be welcomed.

The repository

As mentioned before, this book consists of the creation of an App using Kotlin, as a way to learn by example. As the book progresses, the code will progress with it. You can get it from Github:

Kotlin for Android Developers: The repository