CodeBuild: October 2012

Here are the CodeBuild selection of must-read software engineering books. Books are grouped according to their content with some description.

Reference Books

These Robert C. Martin and Gang of Four books are very fundamental OOP resources for every software engineer.

Coding Perfection

These Steve McConnell, Robert C. Martin and Joshua Bloch books are very helpful with increasing your coding skills.

Refactoring and Patterns

Refactoring and patterns are very important issues of OOP, which brings quality and maintainability. These Martin Fowler and Joshua Kerievsky books are maybe the best references about this issue.

Pragmatic Programming

Andrew Hunt's and David Thomas's "pragmatic" approach to programming brings very important viewpoints to software engineering.

Project Management

There are many project management books in the market but Frederick P. Brooks Jr. and Tom DeMarco presents very impressive important viewpoints to project management.

Android OS is the most popular mobile OS nowadays (leading market with %46.9 above iOS's %18.8). Besides, globally over %20 of computers are mobile devices. So, over %10 of people in the world uses Android OS and softwares related with it. For this reason, Android application development is a very important issue for developers and software engineers.

This post will describe a fast (5 minutes, excluding tool download periods) and simple startup of an android project on Eclipse IDE, for developers who deal with the matter.

1. JDK and Eclipse IDE:

Download and install appropriate JDK for your computer and OS (JDK 6 or 7 are preferred)

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html

Download latest Eclipse distribution, unzip it to your computer.

http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/

2. Android SDK:

Download and install android SDK:

http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

Run Android SDK and install some API (e.g. 8, 14, 16, ...). Android distributions have various APIs and your application API must be compatible with your device. This step may also be performed using Eclipse ADT plug-in Android toolbar buttons. For each API, "SDK Platform" is required. "SDK Tools" and "SDK Platform Tools" under "Tools" menu and "Android Support Library" under "Extras" menu should be installed for general usage.

Don't forget to set your Android SDK directory on Eclipse Window --> Preferences:

3. Eclipse ADT Plugin:

Start Eclipse. Click Help --> Install New Software, paste adress below and click OK:

https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/

Select "Android Development Tools" from "Developer Tools", click "Next" various times and finish installation.

You will see Android SDK (which performs installing different APIs as told in step 2) and Android emulator buttons on the top panel. You can also start Android projects from now on.

4. Android Emulator:

Android SDK includes a useful emulator for testing. After installing ADT plug-in, you can start emulator by "Android Virtual Device Manageer" button from toolbar. After that you may add one or more android devices with different API and system configurations.