Android Fundamentals – Google’s plan to lend developers a hand

As part of it’s push to bring more Android developers on board, Google is teaming up with Udacity to offer a free course on mobile development called Android Fundamentals.

Android Fundamentals is an online course that is made to walk you through the necessary steps required in building Android apps, the best practices in mobile development and Android development in particular.

The Google Developer Advocates are working with the team at Udacity to train “experienced developers who are new to Android or mobile but not new to programming“. In practice you’re not going to be trained to create a “Hello World” program with Android Fundamentals. The course requires that you already have some experience with C++, Python or other similar languages.

All the material on Android Fundamentals from videos, quizzes and forums are available for free by selecting “View Courseware”. From then on can you access the content. In addition, UX Design for Mobile Developers and Mobile Web Development make for a solid complement.

It’s also worth noting that Udacity is supported by EconetZero. Yes, you can access the site via Econet’s free online education initiative. After a few bumps with EconetZero, this could just be one of the many cases where it comes in handy. By signing up to Udacity, you can access Android Fundamentals without spending a dime.

I took some time to go through one of the courses and I found an interesting swing. You can download the whole lesson! By taking a moment to visit “Downloadables” you’re met with an option to download the 300+MB video. Color me impressed.

However on EconetZero you’ll have to chew into your balance since images and video are not supported (seriously, Econet please work on that). The forum also has a sound number of contributors ready to take on any call. They respond at the nick of time you can almost be fooled into thinking its a bot.

Reto Meier, Head of Scalable Developer Advocacy writes in an Android Developers blog post;

“Mobile devices are the platform that will bring the next 5 billion people online”

This is the same quote that was all over this year’s Developers Conference, Google I/O and with such a gesture it’s not hard to see it being a possibility.

Android Fundamentals looks more like a conscious decision by Google as Android extends from smartphones to cars, watches and TVs. Google also unveiled a developer preview of Android L which touts a new design language — “Material Design” — which we’re likely going to see being integrated into more apps with time.