As technology continues evolving to the advanced pick at a rapid pace, the role of an Android developer remains significant in shaping today’s digital landscape and bringing more innovations in mobile application development. In the year 2024 also the expectations for Android developers have grown, which require diverse technical and non-technical skills and following the best practices.
From mastering modern programming languages to creating scalable, secure, and efficient applications, Android developers must stay up to the mark with the latest trends and technology to deliver high-quality applications. In this article, we will explore the top skills that Android developers must have, which also provides insights into the key areas of expertise in Android app development.
Before we get started, let’s have a look at what is Android development.
What is Android Development?
Android development refers to the process of creating applications that can be installed on devices that run the Android Operating System. Android, an operating system developed by Google, is a widely used mobile operating system across the world, powering millions of smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, and other devices. Android developers can use languages Java or Kotlin to develop Android applications, which further has steps like coding, testing, and deployment of apps. The Android development ecosystem is rich and large and offers features and libraries, that allow developers to create seamless quality Android applications.
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Top Android Developer Skills You Must Know in 2024
In addition to technical skills, Android developers should also prioritize enhancing their knowledge of design principles and user experience (UX) in 2024. Understanding material design concepts, accessibility standards, and best practices for delivering exceptional user experiences will be crucial. By staying updated with emerging technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Internet of Things (IoT), and Machine Learning (ML), developers can also stay ahead of trends and meet the demands of the evolving mobile app landscape.
1. Kotlin Programming
After declared as official Android language by Google in 2017, Kotlin has received tremendous popularity among Android developers. Kotlin’s key features such as concise syntax, null safety, and interoperability with Java make it essential for Android development. Though Java is also a supported language for Android development, being the official language of most developers, the company has switched to Kotlin. Android developer must deepen their proficiency in Kotlin programming to take advantage of its features to write concise and quality code.
Below is a list of features that developers must learn thoroughly to leverage Kotlin to write clean, concise, and maintainable code.
- Null safety features
- Lambda functions
- Coroutine
- Extension functions
- High order functions
- Data classes
2. Jetpack Compose
Jetpack Compose, is a modern UI toolkit for building native Android applications developed by Google. Jetpack Compose uses a declarative approach to create user interfaces and also allows developers to describe UI states and their behavior without worrying about their complexities. By starting working with Jetpack Compose, developers can streamline UI development, leverage its powerful features such as state management, and deliver a seamless experience to users. To leverage its features developers are switching from the Imperative approach to the Declarative approach.
Knowing Jetpack Compose deeper can help developers to keep themself walk with modern trends. Below are key features that developers must consider while Jetpack Compose learning.
- State management
- Understanding of Recomposition
- Composable lifecycle
- Theming and Styling
- Gestures handling
- Navigation handling
- Managing callbacks
3. MVVM Architecture
Implementing architecture in a project helps in maintaining and scaling large-size projects easily. Model-View-View-Model (MVVM) architecture is a strong foundation for building scalable and maintainable Android applications. Developers can decouple the UI logic from business logic by using its components such as live data and ViewModel. With MVVM architectures Android developers can ensure separation of concerns, enhance testabilities, and also make collaboration among developers seamless. This can be considered as primary skills that Android developers must take into consideration for creating quality and seamless Android applications.
Below is the breakdown of each component of MVVM architecture.
- Model: The Model is independent of UI and does not interact directly with View or VireModel.Typically it consists of data classes, data entities, and network API calls.
- View: The View component is responsible for displaying the user interface and handles user interactions. The view can be Activyty, Fragments, or XML layouts.
- ViewModel: It contains the business logic, and acts as a messenger between View and Model. It has its own lifecycle like Fragment and Activity.
4. Jetpack Components
Jetpack components are a collection of libraries, tools, and guidance offered by Google to facilitate Android developers to build high-quality applications more easily and efficiently. Jetpack components were introduced to mainly address the issues that Android developers face in general such as navigation issues, lifecycle-related issues, simplifying data persistence, and integration of platform API. All these components are backward compatible, so they can work with a wide range of Android operating systems. All components are modular which allows developers to adopt only needed components.
Below are key components available in Jetpack components.
- ViewModel: The ViewModel component contains the business logic, it separates UI data and logic from UI controllers such as Fragment and Activities.ViewModel stores UI-related data that is generally lost due to device configuration changes.
- LiveData: Live data is an observable lifecycle-aware data holder class that respects the lifecycle of other components such as Fragments and Activities. It helps to avoid memory leaks and crashes that happen due to stale data. LiveData ensures UI components will update when they are in the activity’s lifecycle.
- Navigation: Navigation components simplify the complex navigation flow and ensure consistence navigation experience across the app. It allows developers to design navigation graphs to manage navigation within the Android app.
- Pagging: Pagging components help in loading and displaying large data sets from local storage or network APIs in the form of pagination. It loads data in chunks and handles fetching more data on user scrolls by ensuring a smooth UI experience.
- Work Manager: The WorkManager library is used to manage background tasks in the Android app such as network calls, DB operations, or periodic tasks. WorkManager guarantees the execution of tasks whether the app exists or not.
5. Dependency Injections
Dependency injection facilitates the inversion of the control principle, it enables developers to manage object dependencies more effectively by promoting modular, reusable, and testable code. DI is a commonly used component in large-scale projects as it makes projects easily maintainable due to its code modularization and code reusability feature. With DI Developers can inject class instances rather than creating class instances every time.
Key benefits of Dependency injection include Modularity, Testability, Flexibility, and Reusability. Understanding DI is a bit tricky to start, but this is one of the must-have skills that Android developers should consider.
There are a couple of libraries used to implement DI in Android projects such as Dagger, Hilt, and Coin. Hilt is nowadays the most commonly used DI library by Android developers due to its simple integration steps.
6. Firebase
Offered by Google, Firebase is a comprehensive platform that provides a range of tools and backend services that help developers to build, improve, and grow their mobile applications such as Android and iOS. Services provided by Firebase include Authentication(Google, Firebase, GitHub, Twitter), real-time database, FireStore(Cloud storage), analytics, crash reporting, cloud messaging, and many more services, all seamlessly can be integrated and managed from a single console provided by Firebase.
Having Firebase skills hands-on is very helpful for Android developers as it allows developers to create a complete app without the need for any other back-end server(developers can use cloud storage provided by Firebase).
Below are key features of Firebase
- Authentication
- Real-time database
- FireStore database
- FileStorage
- Firebase cloud messaging
- Remote config
- Analytics
- Dynamic Links
- Crash reporting
- AdMob Integration
Bonus
Apart from the skills that we discussed here, a few more skills are there which Android developers should acquire for building quality and efficient Android applications.
- Material Design
- Reactive programming
- Unit testing and Test driven development
- Performance optimization
- Security best practices
Conclusion
In the year 2024, the landscape of mobile applications evolve rapidly bringing both challenges and opportunities. By having a strong grip on the above-mentioned skills developers can position themselves on the top of the Android ecosystem. As an Android ecosystem continuously evolves, developers must adopt and acquire the android skills set discussed above to stay updated and deliver compelling user experiences. As we embrace the advancement of technology, we must prioritize the cultivation of a growth mindset and commitment to learning. By staying curious, and proactive, Android developers can thrive in 2024 and beyond.
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FAQs
What role emerging technologies play in shaping the skill set for Android developers in 2024?
Emerging technology such as Virtual reality(VR), Augmented reality(AR), IoT(Internet of things), and machine learning(ML) are integrated into mobile applications. Getting familiar with these technology can help developer to stay with trend in current and up coming years.
How important is knowledge of design principles and user experience (UX) in Android development in 2024?
In the year 2024, user centric design principle and delivering a exceptional user experience are most important. Developers must have deep knowledge and understanding of the material design concepts, accessibility standards and follow best practice to create initiative and engaging Android applications.
What are the benefits of using Jetpack Compose for Android app development in 2024?
Jetpack Compose offers a modern approach to building native Android applications, simplifying UI development and allowing developers to describe UI states and behavior declaratively. It streamlines UI development, enhances state management, and provides a more efficient way to create engaging user interfaces.
