A valuable skill for mobile developers includes the ability to develop native android applications. Android developers can work from their homes or anywhere else they choose. The demand for mobile developers is much higher than available experienced mobile developers, so experienced mobile developers with a portfolio of more than 2 published mobile apps, are currently earning an average of $90k to more than $200k per year for contractors. Developers that are rich with ambition while still poor financially are jumping on the Android bandwagon because it is the most affordable option.

Remember that with a free or low-cost entry to become an android developer, you absolutely must develop your skills and portfolio to really stand out from the massive upcoming crowd of wannabe developers that will try to reverse engineer professional developers work because they lack professional experience developing software. Avoid clients that promise to keep you working for free or cheap and focus your earliest work on developing awesome professional portfolio pieces that will attract professional clients that really do value your work.

The Internet provides thousands of free online resources that walk you through the entire process. I list the resources in the order that will keep the learning process the most interesting for anyone that is seriously interested in becoming an awesome mobile developer. You can always bring your laptop to a local library, Internet café or any public Internet access location. Many restaurants also provide free Internet access to customers.

‘TheNewBoston’ provides 200 tutorials to show you how to develop an android application. It’s created so that complete beginners and experienced developers can learn how to install the necessary software development kits and start building a brand new android application within the first ten video tutorials. Each video is only 4 minutes to 8 minutes long, so I was able to get through the first 17 video tutorials in one evening. Do what the video shows, while you watch the video and you will need to stop and restart the videos often if you are really new. You can use your mac, windows, or laptop computer to develop android applications while following along the video tutorials.

Another online free resource that every Android developer must become familiar with is the Android Developers official website. You can download the free software development kits, read the developer guide, watch the latest news, and access more online free developer resources. I suggest you plan about an hour each day to read through the documents starting with Android Design and Dev Guide.

Unity3D is an amazing game development tool and offers various licensing including free options. If you were not interested in developing games for mobile devices, you probably will become interested after you make time to look into Unity3D.com. The online tutorials are fun and walk you through the process of making incredible interactive mobile video games that really do spark any developer’s imagination. The interface for developing video games can be very complicated, but after reading the documentation and walking through the tutorials it was interesting to see how much control over the game physics a developer can have, even if they don’t fully understand the math behind the physics. Even if you are not interested in developing video games for mobile devices, you might find the website interesting because you can play all the games.

If you have any questions about computers or Internet please do send them my way and I’ll do my best to answer you in a future story. I can be reached at my website at http://www.MonicaLamb.com/

References

TheNewBoston Android App Dev Video Tutorials. Retrieved online January 27th 2012 from http://thenewboston.org/list.php?cat=6

Android Developers. Retrieved online January 27th 2012 from http://developer.android.com/index.html

Android Basics. Retrieved online January 27th 2012 from http://www.mybringback.com/series/android-basics/

VentureBeat Android News. Retrieved online January 27th 2012 from http://venturebeat.com/tag/android/

Unity3D. Retrieved online January 27th 2012 from http://www.Unity3D.com