Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

Kotlin for Android Developers: Learn Kotlin the easy way while developing an Android App

Rate this book
Google has officially announced Kotlin as a supported language to write Android Apps.These are amazing news for Android developers, which now have the ability to use a modern and powerful language to make their job easier and funnier.But this comes with other responsibilities. If you want to be a good candidate for new Android opportunities, Kotlin is becoming a new need most companies will ask for. So it's your time to start learning about it!And "Kotlin for Android Developers" is the best tool. Recommended by both Google and Jetbrains, this book will guide through the process of learning all the new features that Java was missing, in an easy and fun way.You'll be creating an Android app from ground using Kotlin as the main language. The idea is to learn the language by example, instead of following a typical structure. I'll be stopping to explain the most interesting concepts and ideas about Kotlin, comparing it with Java 7. This way, you can see what the differences are and which parts of the language will help you speed up your work.This book is not meant to be a language reference, but a tool for Android developers to learn Kotlin and be able to continue with their own projects by themselves. I'll be solving many of the typical problems we have to face in our daily lives by making use of the language expressiveness and some other really interesting tools and libraries.The book is very practical, so it is recommended to follow the examples and the code in front of a computer and try everything it's suggested. You could, however, take a first read to get a broad idea and then dive into practice.

240 pages, Paperback

Published March 21, 2016

49 people are currently reading
434 people want to read

About the author

Antonio Leiva

4 books3 followers

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
53 (28%)
4 stars
71 (38%)
3 stars
45 (24%)
2 stars
10 (5%)
1 star
5 (2%)
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
Profile Image for Egor Andreevich.
6 reviews
April 10, 2016
This book is a great introduction to Kotlin in the context of Android development. I really enjoyed the hands-on approach, and the author has done an amazing job of showcasing the advantages of Kotlin over Java 7. The example application includes most of the components that a real-world Android app would usually have: UI, REST, database, SharedPreferences, unit and instrumentation tests, and working with all of those can be greatly improved with Kotlin, as was demonstrated by this book. Would highly recommend it to anybody interested in Android development.
Profile Image for Sarel Seemonster.
4 reviews8 followers
February 8, 2018
This book is very good. Until chapter 8 at which point it can be thrown away.

The author does some very irritating things, like:

1. Regularly shows you code but doesn't tell you where it is supposed to go. When looking through the Github repo of the final version of the learning exercise app I realised that he even creates folders for some of the classes he creates and he never mentions it!

2. Regularly the author shows a bit of code without telling you if it is supposed to be used somewhere in the learning exercise or if it is just an example of how the Kotlin syntax works.

3. He only tells you that something can be done easier in Kotlin than it could be done in Java, without telling you why you would do this thing in the first place.

4. Has an introductory segment about setting up the example project's gradle files. This segment can be skipped only adding the dependencies he uses like you would in java. He doesn't explain anything in this segment and due to its confusing nature it is likely that you will end up wasting your time getting this segment to work instead of actually learning something.

5. The author refers you to look at the learning exercise's code on github, but that code is for the final version of the app. There is no code for the individual chapters so that you can follow along. The Github repository is effectively useless.

To improve this book all that needs to be done is for the author to specify clearly where all the code he shows you is supposed to be used and forks should be made of the learning exercise's Github repo for each chapter showing you how the app is supposed to look at that stage.

It is clear that the author knows what he is doing. The learning exercise is well thought out and a good way of teaching a wide swath of what you can do with Kotlin. Unfortunately the book begs for an editor. There is a really good book in here trying to come into being but in the end of the day you are better off reading the docs and watching youtube videos.

This book, as it is, will just waste your time.
379 reviews10 followers
February 7, 2016
Una discreta introduzione a Kotlin, ma con tanti difetti:

- spesso non si capisce se il codice riportato sia un esempio o vada davvero inserito da qualche parte nell'applicazione che sta sviluppando

- non dice praticamente mai in che file e/o package, o addirittura classe o funzione, un pezzo di codice vada inserito

- fa continuamente riferimento al repo github, che però ha solo la versione definitiva dell'applicazione, senza branch o tag per vedere lo stato a un certo capitolo del libro, rendendo impossibile capire a cosa si riferisca il libro, visto che il codice viene continuamente rifattorizzato.

- non spiega per niente alcuni concetti. Per esempio "it" dentro un iteratore, o "value" dentro get/set. Alcune cose le ho capite solo perché le conoscevo da altri linguaggi.

Non si può invece incolparlo per alcune modifiche fatte al linguaggio, che è ancora in beta, dopo che il libro è stato scritto. L'autore ha promesso di aggiornare il libro almeno fino alla 1.0 definitiva.
Profile Image for William Cruise.
18 reviews8 followers
June 6, 2017
This is not a good introduction to Kotlin or Android development. The code is not explained clearly, and is not well-organized. New code is introduced without any indication where it goes in the project. I'd often find that a new function goes in a different class and/or package than the one being discussed. Finally, the code online in a GitHub project is the final result, so you can't see a snapshot of the code that you should have at the end of each chapter.
Profile Image for snpefk.
78 reviews6 followers
July 8, 2017
Meh. Поверхностный пересказ доки, плохо организованный код в примерах (куски кода просто вбрасываются без пояснений куда они были добавлены), встретил пару полезных фишек для разработки под Android.

Вместо книги было бы лучше написать статью в личном бложике, где были бы агрегатированы все трюки kotlin в Android.
Profile Image for Kaaveh.
42 reviews6 followers
October 4, 2020
توی این کتاب در قالب یه پروژه نشون دادن وضعیت آب‌و‌هوا، شروع میکنه به یاددادن کاتلین.
با توجه به عنوانش بنظرم کورس زیر خیلی جالب‌تر و کارا باشه:
Developing Android app with Kotlin
بخصوص اینکه هم مطالب بیشتری کاور میکنه و هم دولوپر ادووکیت‌های گوگل دارن تدریس میکنن.

البته مث هر کتاب حوزه زبان برنامه‌نویسی، کدهای این کتاب هم بخشی‌شون دیگه منقضی شده. بخصوص قسمت‌های دیتابیس‌اش که الام رووم رو از جت‌پک داریم!
Profile Image for Cesar Diez Sanchez.
13 reviews17 followers
July 17, 2018
A very good Kotlin book. Lots of useful tips for Android Development. The only drawback I've found so far it's getting deeper into specifics, but having in consideration when the book was published and how fast Kotlin evolves, it's quite complete. Kotlin in Action might be more complete, but Kotlin for Android Developers is written in a very friendly way, so terms are easy to understand. Thank you Antonio!
Profile Image for Blundell.
69 reviews16 followers
June 25, 2017
was a good introduction. My kindle said I read it in about 3 hours, so its a short book! Some kotlin explanations where only written once but then not re-explained when used again which would have been nice - more teaching less "just" explaining.
Profile Image for Angel.
151 reviews11 followers
July 2, 2018
Friendly but not as functional. Some stuff is outdated already because IT changes way too fast but plenty of it is useful for a Kotlin introduction. I'll probably reread sometime or keep as reference manual.
Profile Image for Erma Wimter.
2 reviews
April 12, 2022
Nice article I was really impressed by seeing this blog, it was very interesting and it is very useful for me. Informative blog! It was very useful for me. We are the Top notch Mobile App Development Company Service provider in the USA
Profile Image for Syed Raza.
1 review
June 9, 2017
Book is new for new learners everything is explained well.learn new things from this book.
Profile Image for Akash Nidhi P S.
41 reviews3 followers
June 14, 2017
Good book to those who want to start kotlin in android. Author explains all concepts using an example project which is available in github, which makes it very interesting and easy to understand.
2 reviews1 follower
March 22, 2018
it is an amazing book, i recommend it for android developers who wants to make kotlin apps as quick as possible.
1 review
October 4, 2018
very
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Oskar Díaz.
29 reviews3 followers
July 5, 2019
Básicamente, este libro es la biblia para programar apps en Android con Kotlin.

Yo diría que este libro + Dagger + RxJava y ya estaría todo el pescado vendido...
Profile Image for Jesus Almaral.
Author 1 book7 followers
January 13, 2017
It´s a good book, but I think it´s a little confusing, some of the exercises don´t make sense until you finish the chapter, so you have to read each chapter twice or thrice. Despite this I think is one of the best resources to learn Kotlin right now.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.