Want to Be an Android Developer? Google Will Teach You How

Google and Udacity want to teach you how to be an Android developer.

The new Android Basics Nanodegree by Google offers folks with little or no programming experience the chance to learn from experts. Android Basics by Google guides new developers through the learning process, helping to build skills—the Java programming language, interacting with Web APIs, using a SQLite database—essential to building applications.

"Most importantly, students will learn how to transform an app idea into a technically sound plan that can be implemented successfully," Udacity's Christopher Watkins wrote in a blog post.

"By the end of the Nanodegree, students will be ready to take the career-track Android Developer Nanodegree program, and will have built and submitted 10 projects, eight of which are functional apps," he added.

The basic degree costs $199 per month (after a one-week free trial) for access to specialized courses taught by Googlers, hands-on projects, personalized feedback, and other mentoring and learning opportunities. As an added incentive, the first 50 students who complete the basic degree will be entered to win a full scholarship for the advanced program.

Not prepared to spend $200 a month to learn how to code? Or just want to brush up on your skills? Udacity and Google also offer a handful of free online courses covering Android, Web development, the cloud, tech entrepreneurship, and more.

Though there are far more Android devices than iPhones in the wild, iOS app developers have long made more money on their apps than their Android counterparts. At WWDC earlier this month, Apple said it has paid out $50 billion to developers to date.

A February report from App Annie predicted that the iOS App Store will retain its crown as the most lucrative app market through 2017, at which point "the combination of Google Play and third-party Android store revenue will surpass it due to wider proliferation of Android devices," App Annie said. As for which types of apps bring in the most money, it's all about games, which are poised to dominate the app landscape through 2020.

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.