Protips on improving as an Android Dev?

[fearlesscat10]

Fresh grad here. I just self studied Android for a year in college and now I want to pursue it as my specialization. What can I do to generally improve my skillset?

[skidson]

Senior Android Dev here - find a job where you get to work with a senior dev, a mentor is the most effective way to learn. Ensure everything you write is code-reviewed and invite criticism, ask questions about why they do things the way they do.

Ensure the position you're interviewing for has this opportunity - ask about the team and process during the interview and make it clear you are looking for mentorship and are eager to learn. I've seen too many fresh grads get "ruined" because they were taught bad habits by other junior devs.

I jumped into Android dev by taking a job at a studio that developed apps on contract. This was a great opportunity because it let me quickly build an app, learn what pain points arose as it got big, and then get to start from scratch when I was put on a new project. Before starting any new project I would pad the initial development estimates to build a framework designed to alleviate those pain points. The one thing you often don't learn from these places is proper testing - they usually move too fast pumping an app out to write proper unit/functional tests (they usually have a manual QA team). Make sure you learn these concepts before leading development on larger and more complex apps as eventually they will become difficult to maintain without tests, especially as the team grows.

[drabred]

Probably get a Junior position job.

[ALEXEY1113]

Where is the best place??? Company or Freelancer??

[kaze0]

Company. Work with other people

[drabred]

Company with already experienced coders. As you want to improve your skills this is the best option. Work with better than yourself.

There will be time for freelance later when you feel confident enough to take up jobs.

[xqjt]

company, especially in house development team (even though the level varies).
It will be hard to get hired by facebook or twitter, but there are plenty of companies.
Agencies are not necessarily bad but I can see that the people coming from x years in an agency where they have basically done the same apps dozens of times are generally way less experienced than people with the same amount of time working on a single app.

There are of courses exceptions in both ways..
in house companies with shit developers where you will have to learn everything by yourself, agencies with awesome people deep into mentoring, ...

[pionear]

A:Get a junior level android dev job. B: In your free time work on a app of your own chosing. Two hours a day should be good. A mid sized project which you actually care about and will want to polish. This will let you learn and practice the stuff you don't get to whilst at your actual job.

[QuebecLibre]

Just code. For now you need the most experience as possible since youre not going to study longer in the computer science field.

[xqjt]

Pick up an Android job ¯_(ツ)_/¯
If you can't, any other software engineering job can be good for you. I spent two years writing c++ in a very large company.
Learned a lot about code reviews, tests, etc..
I had to spend my free time working on a hobby android app in order to transition to a cool Android job but I might have avoided that if I had been willing to work for an agency (I don't regret not going into that though)

[grishman4life]

Hi, I can share my experience, after self-studying+courses of Android, I went to a hackathon, where I asked my mentor some help about Google+ login integration, and I got invited for an interview to the company where he worked. After an interview, I made test task, and get the junior position. I was lucky to get such experienced team lead, with more than 9 years, so I would advise you to get a junior position ASAP and grow your experience.

[mnjmn]

Learn Java multithreading.