Android - Android Studio  

Anrdoid Studio : What is it ?

Android Studio is an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for Android application. Simply put, it is a development tool for android Apps, as Visual Studio is a development tool for Windows application.

This tool is developed and distributed by Google and you can download it for free (See Download and Installation page if you are interested in trying the tool yourself).

Why am I interested in this tool ?

Everybody would have different reasons to use any specific tool. Likewise, I have my own reason to have interest in this tool. Personally I am not interested in developing a fancy looking Android App. To be honest, I don't think I am talented on it. Then, why am I interested in this tool ?  My personal interest comes from developing my embedded systems. It is now become a generic trend to put wireless communication functionality like Buetooth or WiFi in embedded system. If I put those wireless functions in an embedded application, we would need another party that can communicate or control the system over the WiFi / Bluetooth. I can use a PC with WiFi / Bluetooth for this purpose, but PC would be a little too heavy to carry around to control the embedded system. I thought Android Phone can be a good and handy alternative for this. This is the main drive for me to look into Android Studio.  Another big motivation for me is to study about overall software architecture on Android operating system.  

What I am going to deal with ?

Since I am not a professional App developer and don't have very wide experience of developing Android Apps, I would not deal with very wide subjects of Android Studio. The main purpose of my tutorial is to help person who has no experience with this tool and help them with the very basic setup. Unlike other purely software based application, Smartphone application development is similar to developing an embedded system software. It implies that the development tool should provide not only the pure software component, but also the components that are tied up with hardware component. Mainly due to those configuration for hardware components, setting up the development tool tend to become tricky and challenging. Once you overcome this initial setup phase, the other parts (writing the program itself) will not be that difficult assuming that you have some experience with any kind of programming language, and you can easily follow up a lot of sample programs you can get from internet.

Main purpose in my tutorial is to share with my personal experience with the initial setup as in detail as possible with a lot of screen captures. Since the tool (Android Studio) tend to change and improve very rapidly as it evolve, you would find some details in this tutorial have already been changed when you are trying it with any later version, but you can still get some general idea from these tutorials on how to utilize the tool.

What kind of programming lanaguage would be helpful ?

Is there any specific programming skills you want to recommend for Android App development ?  If you have experience and knowledge on any kind of programming language, that can be a plus. But if I am asked to pick only one language that can help you with Android Studio, it should be Java.

You will see almost every likes and dislikes of Java while you are writing program in Android Studio.