I've looked at the online reference and it's not very good. "Cuter" than the Sun Java stuff, but not as comprehensive and doesn't explain things very well. And it's a lot slower referencing an online reference than, say, looking up something in "Java in a Nutshell".
One thing that seems to be missing all around is images of the various widgets. One of the books (I forget which one -- don't have them here with me now) has virtually no images at all, while the other has precious few. As to the "... in 24 Hours" books, I had to buy them sight-unseen, so I based my choices on newness and ratings. In many other such books about a quarter of the book is devoted to a basic reference -- enough to get me started -- but not with these. (And from browsing the messages here I'm guessing that many of the developers learned C++, if not Android, in 24 hours or less.) On Jul 16, 3:05 am, Indicator Veritatis <mej1...@yahoo.com> wrote: > If you insist on using a screwdriver as a hammer, of course you will > complain about the quality of the hammer: you ask about REFERENCE > books, but neither of the books you cite are meant as reference books. > > As for why there is such a shortage of reference books, that is > because the best reference is not a book, it is the online reference > Google maintains athttp://developer.android.com. > > No book publishing cycle can possibly keep up fast enough to compete > with that -- as a reference. The books are good for explaining things > that references do not even try to include. The books on Android from > Wrox, Manning , O'Reilly, Pragmatic Programmer's and yes, Commonware > all do this. > > Besides: no book titled "...Development in 24 hours" should be taken > seriously. Even though the best of them really do cram an amazing > amount of material in a mere 24 hours worth, 24 hours is simply > unreasonably short: there is no way Android development could be > taught in 24 hours. > > On Jul 15, 12:44 pm, DanH <danhi...@ieee.org> wrote: > > > Is there one? I have "Professional Android 2 Application Development" > > by Meier and "Teach Yourself Android Application Development in 24 > > Hours" by Darcy/Conder. Both are mediocre at best. > > > Neither is a decent REFERENCE, but rather they are basically > > structured as tutorials, without nothing in the way of reasonably > > comprehensive API documentation (which also, BTW, is woefully > > inadequate on the android.com site). And no sort of in-depth > > discussion of the structure of the system, so one could perhaps > > understand it rather than simply using the (inadequate) cookbooks. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
