In my dealings with React Native, I have found certain plugins disappointing, so I am considering writing my own plugin in Kotlin. Obviously, that requires knowledge of Kotlin and how to develop for Android. I know the barest basics of Kotlin, but I know of a few resources to improve my knowledge of the language.
What I'd like to ask from you guys is if you know of any good tutorial, book, playground or other such things to learn Kotlin specifically to develop Android apps.
Bonus points if you can also point me to somewhere that explains how to develop plugins for React Native.
Thanks a lot!
Top comments (5)
Tbh I don't believe there's such thing as "Kotlin to develop Android". Anything you develop will be as advanced as your knowledge of SDK & language itself both. There're many ways to achieve progress, some are good practices and some are bad, but to effectively understand which is which, you need in depth knowledge in both.
I personally think kotlinlang.org/ is a great source to learn language & features, same goes for developer.android.com/ - they improved documentation and tutorials over year so much. Only thing is, it'll take time to advance in both.
What I can suggest is to start searching how you can do what you want to do. Pick up from examples, official workshops, suggestions, blogs - try to achieve little pieces, then dive into what and why of it before taking next step. For example, try to build an empty app, put a navigation bar, then inspect methods you called, components you used, where you invoked them and why you called them there etc. Source documentation is quite good. Same for language features - if you see any keyword or something you want to learn more about, kotlin website above is great source. What you need next ? A list ? Tons of source - just need to spend more time on reading what does what rather than trying to achieve results immediately. More you dive into it, faster you'll get hang of things.
To learn Kotlin itself:
dev.to/jmfayard/best-ways-to-learn...
Learning Android is hard, I would recommend you don't do that alone but find someone that helps you. Look at local meetups, or maybe antonioleiva.com/online-course/
Personally, if you have some Java code you understand handy, I would let Android Studio automatically convert it to Kotlin and study the difference. AS does a pretty decent job nowadays. It can make some very verbose Kotlin, but with time you'd learn how to trim down the excess.
udacity.com/course/kotlin-bootcamp... Udacity and Google partnered for a free bootcamp on Kotlin.
ebookfrenzy.com/ebookpages/kotlin_...