kriggio at Bumble Machine has written a helpful description of his experiences writing his first Android application (Android Blackjack). He outlines the ease at which he was able to transition his Eclipse and Java skills to the Android SDK, and discusses challenges he faced with some of the differences in accessing resources (card images). He’s also been kind enough to release his source code.
There has been a steady release of source code and tutorials this week as developers begin to port their existing applications, and write new programs for the Android platform. It’s becoming obvious that Google is really winning over the open source community with the Android platform, and it will be very exciting once the Android phones are released to have such a wealth of applications (often open source) available to us to make our phones enjoyable.
Android applications are starting to remind me of widgets. Since applications are able to mash together Android features with data from the internet, I think the possibilities really will become endless here. I’d especially like to see applications become very easy to add and remove like widgets on iGoogle and NetVibes are. The unfortunate thing about a platform like the Palm Treo 650 that I own is that applications are terrible to add and remove requiring a frustrating syncing process, plus they install databases and leave residuals behind that clog up internal memory and eventually make the system unstable. I don’t see this as being a problem with the Android platform.
Source: My first Program using the Android SDK [blog.bumblemachine.com]