Development of a tool for gaining relevant skills for a solid career in native Android development, focusing on today’s industry

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to evaluate and appraise the required skills that segues native Android app developers from any level to experts levels. It takes a deep dive into industry demands for Android developer roles in terms of technical skills and mindset. This evaluation is supported by the opinions and experiences of expert native developers coupled with the mindset and discipline mostly worn to ensure a healthy and certain journey to expertise as far as native (that is non-cross-platform android app development in the context of this research) Android application is concerned. To complement this research, a native Android application was built. The aim of this application is to provide useful resources for every tool/skill revealed by our research. With such a system, we believe Android enthusiasts would be able to get a better view into the mind of the industry as well as get a better sense on how to obtain certain talents pertaining to Android development. The journey from developing a ‘hello world’ program to sophisticated applications such as ‘gmail, ‘spotify’, ‘yandex taxi’ just to name a few requires an exquisite set of skills, discipline, and mindset something which this research seeks to expose. This study is limited to native Android app development today and reflects a clearer perspective as to what today’s mobile industry demands in terms of technical skills, discipline and mindset. Our results contained data such as skills and tools mostly used in Android developer roles according to our respondents (Android developers, recruiters and team leaders) as well as those occasionally used. Mostly used skill contained skills like Kotlin, MVVM, XML, Glide, Material design just to name a few while skills occasionally used include Firebase, Sqlite, Unit testing, Dagger2. Also, skills where categorised into what respondent’ believed to be beginner, intermediate and expert levels. In addition to this, various personal opinions were got from respondents about how they would prefer to go about learning a new skill and more than 70% of them thought that they do via building on some small Android project.