preface

I often hear newcomers ask, is Android saturated? I’ve been thinking about writing an article about Android developers’ worries for a long time, but I just had the courage to do it today. Recently, no matter in wechat, QQ group, or in the major blog sites, you can hear the voice of Android development depression everywhere, and now the popularity of big data, artificial intelligence, to a large extent, has a certain impact on Android developers. The main purpose of writing this article is to express my opinion on current Android development, just my personal opinion. Google acquired Android on August 17, 2005. It has been more than 10 years since then. Android has more than 1 billion units in the world, accounting for more than 70% of the market share. Android is still the core of Google. It is impossible to give up such a large amount of user data, but to do better and better. A lot of people might say, will it be like the old Symbian system? The answer is definitely not, for several reasons:

Symbian is closed source while Android is open source

2. Open source, many companies are deeply customizing their systems

3. Compared to 10 years ago, the Android system is more and more perfect now

4. With Symbian as an example, Google wouldn’t be foolish enough to follow the same path

5.Android’s rich learning resources and community

6. If there were no Android, there would be no Xiaomi and other mobile phones in China…


In my opinion, if Google had not acquired Android, I guess Google would not be as famous as it is now, and it would not be as brilliant and large as it is now. So, what exactly will the future of Android be developed into? Intelligent home, artificial intelligence, VR technology, AR technology, security. In the future, Android will be more humanized and intelligent, as well as safe, visual experience.

In this environment, Android mobile development will certainly have a place in the game, so Android’s demise is not a concern.

The industry situation

Android situation and environment

If you are an Android developer, you must have heard a lot of rumors, summed up in a few sentences that mean Android is no longer popular, Android learned not to find a job, Android is going to be abandoned, etc., a lot of uncomfortable comments. But let’s face it: Android isn’t as hot as it was a few years ago. If a language has had its heyday, it must have a curve like the sinusoidal curve that rises rapidly, then reaches a peak, then falls again, and finally reaches a plateau. This year or two is already floating between saturated values, so in this form, the requirements for individual developers may be higher. In the past, as long as you know the four components of Android are hot property, that era has passed, with the experience requirements of human-computer interaction, the requirements of App user experience, fluency and so on, has not been comparable. In this context, the same is true for our Android developers

In such cases, due to the saturation, everywhere to recruit junior engineers, the company had the choice, so will choose more excellent, this inevitably led to the us often said, Android developers have rotten street, actually otherwise, only the requirements of the company get higher, market saturation, having a high threshold. So this requires us to be more skilled in technology, as far as I know, middle and senior engineers are still very popular

Mobile development

React Native comes along

The mobile terminal has developed so rapidly in just a few years, and the typical representatives are Android and IOS, which have developed so fast and become so popular. Since they are both mobile terminals, why do we need two terminals to develop each APP separately? As IT industry, there must be leaders in all aspects of the IT industry who will try their best to accommodate two terminals, a set of code, both terminals can run;

React Native is a language developed by FaceBook. It is compatible with both Android and IOS systems. You can develop a set of code that can run on both ends. Before this once brought developers how much hope, got the favour of many developers, but I think a lot of people don’t know ReactNative development exactly have pit, exactly like hearsay, improved efficiency and reduced the cost, this is before I see an article on a big feelings after actual development: React Native technology pros and cons. So, in my opinion, learning more platform-compatible languages is definitely a plus for you as an Android developer. But also want to see you time, experience and other factors, and suit. If you haven’t learned much about Android or are still in the initial stage and want to learn React Native well again, I suggest that it is the best choice to master the linguistics required in your current job before expanding your learning. Don’t look at what is new, try to understand a little, and finally find that they do not have a master, the loss outweighs the gain.

Google Kotlin

Google is promoting Kotlin in recent days. Kotlin is undeniably supported by Google and has the characteristics of the language itself. Personally, I think the following features are very popular:

① Significant code simplification ②100% Java code compatibility ③ functional programming ④ various syntactic sugar

Now that Kotlin is supported by Google and the language has better features than Java, it’s bound to be a hit. Here’s my personal opinion:

(1) Don’t rush to learn Kotlin unless you have enough time to spare. (2) It takes time for one language to replace another, usually three to five years. (3) Since Kotlin has many advantages and is fully compatible with Java code, At present, there are many large domestic and foreign apps are still Java. For example, QQ, wechat, Alipay and other apps, it still takes time and cost to write all of them suddenly by Kotlin. And the total small company’s old projects also need maintenance and so on. (4) Kotlin’s tripartite library may still be incomplete, with unknown bugs, community activity, etc

With all this said, there’s no denying that Kotlin has a very good chance of becoming the most popular language for Android development, but it’s still going to take some time, so it’s up to you to decide if switching to Kotlin right away is right for you.

Flutter

What is Flutter?

On February 27, 2018, Google released the first Beta version of Flutter at Mobile World Congress 2018. Flutter is Google’s new mobile UI framework to help developers develop high quality native apps on both Ios and Android. It has the following features:

As a new Android developer, Hot Reload is really comfortable. You can save and Reload in Android Studio with CTRL + S, and the emulator can see the effect immediately. ② The idea that Everything is a Widget. For Flutter, everything in the mobile app is a Widget, with an appealing and flexible interface design through a combinable collection of Spaces, a rich animation library and a layered extension architecture.

③ High quality user experience for cross-platform devices with portable GPU-accelerated rendering engine and high performance native code runtime. While I have no idea what a portable GPU-accelerated rendering engine is, the end result is that applications built with Flutter will run almost as efficiently as native applications.

However, because the current mainly used in UI, not clear follow-up development, we still do not blindly follow the trend for the time being, after all, these still need a lot of masters to practice, and then continue to optimize, improve to suit us these novice level to use. Of course, AS I said before, if you have enough time, you can learn and try. Learning more and understanding more is definitely beneficial to yourself.

The rise of artificial intelligence and big data

As a program ape, you must know the development of artificial intelligence and big data in the past two years. Whether IT is the support of the national government or the development of the IT industry, as well as the world’s IT giants, they are vigorously developing artificial intelligence and big data. After all, artificial intelligence and big data are the most popular language in the next 10 years. I’m sure a lot of you are like me. Artificial intelligence is probably the most common word that pops up on any open source site, tech blog platform, or tech community, and Python has gone viral.

It’s not uncommon to see a lot of bloggers Posting that Python became the most popular language in the open source community in a few months. But we can see how popular it is on the other side. Maybe that’s why a lot of Android developers, or more than just Android developers, are trying to get in on the action, trying to get on board. Here are a few of my own ideas, just personally: ① Know what the market is like today, what skills are needed to get a Python development job, and what kind of talent companies are looking for.

(2) the system of learning planning: what do you want to know what you’re learning every day, because contact the novice is more, a lot of people learn, learn to give up, or they don’t know what they are learning, so very confused no plan, is certainly not Python, so learning Python want to know what to learn every day, what to do.

③ If you only learn Python by yourself, it will be very difficult to find a job after learning it. Now Python development is generally very demanding and requires work experience. It is not only a waste of time, but also unprofessional.

So you can think of their future is to take this road, or just want to try, follow the trend; Don’t spend too much time. If you have time, you might as well study in your own field. It might be more beneficial for you.

conclusion

Any market is the survival of the fittest, as long as you have good technology, there is no saturated or unsaturated problem, so it is important to improve themselves. Knowing more is a plus, not a requirement. High threshold can only prove that this market is constantly mature! Another thousand readers have a thousand Hamlet, so the above is only their own key, do not like spray!