There are multiple ways to approach Android Development but by far the most official and powerful is to use Android Studio. This is the official IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for the Android platform, developed by Google and used to make the majority of the apps that you probably use on a daily basis.
Android Studio was first announced at a Google I/O conference in 2013 and was released to the general public in 2014 after various beta versions. Prior to its release, Android development was handled predominantly through Eclipse IDE, which is a more generic Java IDE that also supports numerous other programming languages.
Android Studio makes life significantly easier compared with non-specialist software, but is still has a little way to go before it can claim to be a completely intuitive and smooth experience. For complete beginners, there is an awful lot to learn here and much of the information available – even through official channels – is either out of date or too dense to make head or tails of.
In this post, we’ll explain what Android Studio does in a little more detail and go over the basic functionality that you need to get started. I’ll try and keep everything and easy as possible and hopefully this will serve as the first step on your journey to Android Development.

So just what is Android Studio?

Those of you with no prior experience in coding may still be wondering precisely what Android Studio’s role is when it comes to development… what is an IDE anyway?
As an IDE then, Android Studio’s job is to provide the interface for you to create your apps and to handle much of the complicated file-management behind the scenes. The programming language you will be using is Java and this will be installed separately on your machine. Android Studio is simply where you will write, edit and save your projects and the files that comprise said projects. At the same time, Android Studio will give you access to the Android SDK or ‘Software Development Kit’. Think of this as an extension to the Java code that allows it to run smoothly on Android devices and take advantage of the native hardware. Java is needed to write the programs, the Android SDK is needed to make those programs run on Android and Android Studio has the job of putting it all together for you. At the same time, Android Studio also enables you to run your code, either through an emulator or through a piece of hardware connected to your machine. You’ll then also be able to ‘debug’ the program as it runs and get feedback explaining crashes etc. so that you can more quickly solve the problem.
Google has done a lot of work to make Android Studio as powerful and helpful as possible. It offers live hints while you’re coding for example and will often suggest necessary changes that can fix errors or make your code more efficient. If a variable isn’t being used for instance, it will be highlighted grey. And if you start typing a line of code, Android Studio will provide a list of auto-complete suggestions to help you finish it; great if you can’t quite remember the correct syntax or you just want to save some time!