Episode 197: Lars Vogel on Android

Filed in Episodes by on September 6, 2013 4 Comments
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Recording Venue: WebEx

Guest: Lars Vogel

Lars VogelLars Vogel, consultant, Eclipse committer, and owner of vogella.com, gives an overview of the Android operating system. His conversation with Jeff begins with a definition of Android and a brief history. Android is an operating system programmed in Java. It can be found on different types of devices such as tablets, phones, and Google Glass. Lars explains why Android is more than just a mobile operating system then describes some basics of Android development such as resource management, the Dalvik virtual machine, and how to deal with device fragmentation. Device fragmentation occurs when the user base for an application is running a variety of versions of the operating system. Fragmentation is a concern for some Android developers, but it is an inevitability which Android provides effective support for. Lars outlines Android’s memory management and methods such as onStart, onPause, and onStop, which allow the user to define how the application responds to changes in the operating system around the application. The conversation concludes with Lars describing his thoughts on the future of Android, namely as a desktop and laptop operating system.

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