Everyone knows that it takes times and dedication to fully master any skill. As you practice more often you get a wider understanding of how to do things better. We know you might be looking for ways to improve, that´s we gathered some tips and best practices to become a complete Android developer.

The process of improving as an Android developer can be easier if we learn from others. After all, this is something that has always been part of Android, given its characteristics.

With that in mind, we’d like to share the main pieces of advice that most developers give about Android app development.

Best practices for Android Development

We’ve talked about some of the best practices for Android development provided by course instructor Noe Branagan, and we saw the importance of improving app security and performance.

In the same line, many point out the importance of using the recommended Android architecture in order to build robust and production-quality apps. Given its multiple components (activities, fragments, services, etc), this can help you in maintaining and testing your app.

Read more code and practice every day

Reading is essential in any profession. In the case of developers, analyzing other experienced developers´ code can be really beneficial for you.

There are open-source codes and libraries you can take a look at to learn new techniques or implementations for your app. Here is a list of some app codes worth checking out.

It goes without saying that practicing every day is key, it could be for a couple of hours or during 10-12 hours in a row, everything will depend on your goals. However, the main thing is that you make sure to learn new things periodically. Weekly, for instance.

This also includes spending some time in forums, where people are more than willing to help and answer questions.

Stay updated

This is a premise very fundamental, especially in technology. As Android updates, you need to update yourself too. In this ambit, we often find out a new way to do things -mostly for better-. Being aware of the trends and upcoming changes should be part of the day to day of developers.

One way to keep up with what is happening in the industry is to subscribe to Android official sites and blogs. Another way is to follow relevant social media accounts.

Plus, you can always try to develop a new tech skill or learn a new programming language, like Kotlin, because this will help you to improve your profile.

Contribute to open source

Being an Android developer, it is more than likely that someday you find yourself at the point where you’d want to share with others a library, a plugin or a piece of code you’ve built. Or maybe you can seek to work on in an open source project or improve certain documentation.

There is something unique about the process of collaborating, you can always learn something new from it and increase your worth as a developer.

Make your network grow

Another Instructor of the Professional Android Developer course, Adrián Catalán, once reminded us that Your network is your net worth. There are certain skills related to empathy and communication required in order to become a complete Android developer.

Being part of a local community of developers is always important. Attending to meetups or, in case you have the opportunity, being in a bigger event could be something you need to do to gain required social skills.

Finally, you can check out the interview we did to Adrián Catalán about improving your Android developer profile or the Tips list we made for beginner developers.

So, What do you think about these tips and best practices? Do you think they can help you become a complete Android developer?