Google offers free Android development Udacity course
android-developers.blogspot.com
android-developers.blogspot.com
That changes the mooc positionning somewhat. In my case (student) I would not take the full course.
Seems that Coursera is doing something right in that respect: you can get a verified certificate for $49, or pay to get a capstone project graded individually. You also get to complete a substantial part of the course before committing to a certificate. That brings value to individual students while keeping the price affordable.
/end of pointless rant
Those videos are by far the best learning material on Android I have found so far.
Do you think such a certificate would be a deciding factor in the hiring process? (Especially for entry-level positions, but also generally)
I just reviewed a test made by somebody that would like to join our team. There were some very weird use of view in there, for example holding references to dozens of view objects in order to display them in a grid instead of caching the bitmap themselves, among other things. That was a big no-no. A junior developer is going to make mistakes (and she already has a couple of years of experience) but if each of his/her code reviews end up with a -2, both parties are going to lose their time.
Also, you don't have to use Eclipse or Android Studio at all if you don't want to. You can use whatever text editor and whatever build system floats your boat (ant and gradle are common).
The only time I use either of the Android IDEs (Android Studio, because Eclipse is horrible) is when I need to do on-device visual debugging; otherwise I just do command-line builds and deploy using adb.
Deleted comment
> Free 2 week trial.