Mentor or Android programming courses?

Question

Java

Good afternoon
I studied the basics of java (I studied javarush and reached level 28), studied android at the same time (I wrote a couple of applications (not commercial ones), even worked a little with a freelancer). Then, due to life circumstances, there was a break for half a year. Didn't write anything at all. Now I firmly decided to return and at the beginning of next year I will get a job as a programmer. The real question is what to do? How to be?
1) Sign up for android \ java courses that have an internship. It seems that it will be possible to refresh the knowledge, and the internship lures me more. Does anyone know normal courses that are not straight for a beginner? In the Internet, it seems that all the courses are hayat.
2) Find a mentor. It's a dark forest here. Where to look for it, how much better is this approach?
3) Finish javarush (start everything from the beginning or continue) and / or find a free course on android of some kind (Maybe someone knows a good one)?
4) Find a group of freelancers or a startup and work for them for free. But where to look for them? Do they even take newbies? I had experience working with a freelancer, I made an application, but our work didn’t work out, the person wrote professionally on ios, and he wanted me to write on android at his same speed, but so far I physically couldn’t do it because I had to topics from scratch.

Answer 1

I think it would be best to study the theory thoroughly, write 2-3 albeit not very complex, but high-quality applications (so that the code is beautiful, the most popular and recommended by Google libraries aka Dagger2, Retrofit, Butterknife, Android Architecture components etc.) are used. And then settle down as a june anywhere. The main thing here is the ability to write real code, which you will demonstrate on your projects.
As for the theory, in my opinion, all sorts of courses and video lectures are a waste, first of all, of your time. Well, money. Almost all the necessary information is on developer.android.com, and I must say that everything is very coolly structured, and in sufficient detail. If something is quite complicated, then there is a wonderful resource codelabs.developers.google.com, where there are a lot of tutorials. Everything is step by step, with source codes, with pictures. Yes, you need to be friends with English.
While English-language resources are slow, I advise you to use Russian-language resources at the same time, namely textbooks.
Good, for my taste:
https://www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/141049718/
https://www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/136331151/
Also, in everything related to programming, I strongly recommend keeping in mind the HeadFirst books from O'Really. The presentation of the material is excellent, suitable mainly for beginners when it is necessary to chew on the main issues in a super-clear way.
As for the popular startandroid.ru, I would not recommend it, because the lessons are very outdated, and there is no logic and curriculum, unlike the above-mentioned textbooks.
As for mentoring, in my opinion, theoretically it is quite an interesting topic. It would be ideal to work with a practicing professional who, for some fee, will look at your code, point out errors and so on from the height of their experience. It's like a senior friend at work.
I tried a mentoring program from the Ukrainian company foxminded (foxminded.com.ua). 7500 per month, there is a test period of 10 days, during which you will understand for sure whether it suits you or not. I must say that apart from this office, I have not seen mentoring programs anywhere else. Although, I repeat, this is a real topic for gaining programming skills with an eye to further work in this area.
Good luck!

Answer 2

Hello. I am also junior in this topic. If you want, we can start working together. [email protected] write, we will discuss questions.