This year at OSCON we and O’Reilly are co-presenting Android Hands-on. The event is on the evening of Wednesday, July 21 after the Expo-hall reception. Led by Google Android experts, the Hands-on will run from 7:00 pm-10:00 pm, and will be intense, technical, and structured. The goal is that you leave the room with foundation skills for writing interesting code for an open-source stack that runs on a pocket-sized Internet-connected device.
Some specific topics we’ll cover:
Porting existing C codebases to Android
Integrating Android apps with RESTful web interfaces
UI patterns and best practices
Sign-up in advance is required, and is restricted to registered full conference attendees and speakers. Spaces are limited and will be given out on a first-come-first-served basis.
If you’re considering participating, you might want to keep these things in mind:
Android apps are written in the Java programming language, with the exception of some performance-critical code (typically for games) written in C and C++. If you aren’t familiar with at least one of these languages, you won’t benefit much from the session.
To prepare, you might want to go to developer.android.com and download the SDK (available for Linux, Mac, and even Windows). Try building the HelloAndroid app and running it on the emulator.
You might also benefit from attending the Android for Java developers tutorial on Monday and/or Dan Morrill’s Android: The Whats and Wherefores session on Wednesday morning.