Download courses on android programming. Free course “Android. Fast start. What a mobile application developer needs to know

Hello. Today I came across a post about a programming course for Android on the Linux Foundation website, and along with it, a lot of comments that I would like to see a translation of these lessons. Since now, after four years of development for microcontrollers, I have begun to study programming for mobile devices, then at the same time I decided to translate the first part of the lesson.

Android programming for beginners. Part 1
Android smartphones and tablets are increasingly found in our bags and pockets, and Android programming is also becoming more popular. It's a great development platform - the API is well documented and easy to use, and it's just fun to create something that you can run on your smartphone. Initially, you can do without it by creating and testing the code using an emulator on your Linux PC. The first of a two-part introduction explains how to create a simple timer app and gives you an introduction to the Android API. The course assumes a basic understanding of Java, XML and programming technologies, but still feel free to try even if you have a very vague understanding of it.
Getting started and development environment
A little about the versions: latest version Android is 4.2 (Jelly Bean), but as you can see from this chart, it's not widely deployed yet. It is best to start developing under one of the versions: 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) or 2.3 (Gingerbeard), especially considering that Android versions are backward compatible (i.e. your code for version 2.3 will work on 4.2), and applications developed for a later version will not always work on the old one. The code shown here should work on versions 4.0 and 2.3.
The easiest way to get a development environment is to install the Android Bundle, which you can download. Also you will need JDK 6 (not just JRE). Don't forget that Android is not compatible with gcj. If you are already using Eclipse or another IDE, then you can try setting it up for Android. How to do this is described. Now create a project called Countdown using Eclipse, or from the command line. I set the settings to BuildSDK 4.0.3 and minimum SDK 2.2, and (in Eclipse) used the BlankActivity template.
My first project for Android: interface
Our first program for Android will be a timer that shows a countdown from 10 seconds after pressing a button. Before writing code, we need to create an interface - what the user will see when they launch our application. You need to open res/layout/activity_countdown.xml and create an XML template - using the Eclipse editor or a text/XML editor, enter the following:
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