Compose Without the Confusion: Kotlin and Jetpack Compose Fundamentals: State, Layouts, Navigation, ViewModels and Room

Compose Without the Confusion is a hands-on guide to building Android apps with Kotlin and Jetpack Compose that explains why the screen does what it does, not just what to type. It starts with the Kotlin that Compose code leans on every day (null safety, data classes, sealed interfaces, lambdas, coroutines and Flow) and an Android Gradle plugin 9 project that builds today, then works through composables and modifier order, layouts that behave on every phone, and the chapter most people need most: state, recomposition, remember versus rememberSaveable, state hoisting and side effects. From there it themes the app with Material 3 (colour roles, dynamic colour, a user dark-mode setting), moves between screens with Navigation 3 (and shows the Navigation 2 type-safe version), puts each screen's state in a ViewModel with StateFlow and one-way data flow, saves data with Room and DataStore, and finishes with previews, JVM ViewModel tests and Compose UI tests. One small app, Pantry, grows chapter by chapter, and every version number was checked against the official Android release pages at the time of writing (October 2026).

What you get

• The Kotlin you actually need for Compose, with real examples from shipping apps
• A project setup for AGP 9 with built-in Kotlin, the Compose BOM and a version catalog
• Layouts that behave: Row, Column, Box, LazyColumn keys, Scaffold, insets and the keyboard
• State without the confusion: the recomposition loop, which holder survives what, hoisting, derivedStateOf and effects
• Material 3 theming with colour roles, dynamic colour and dark mode
• Navigation 3 with typed keys and per-screen ViewModels, plus Navigation 2 type-safe routes
• ViewModel, StateFlow, stateIn and collectAsStateWithLifecycle, wired with simple manual DI
• Room entities, DAOs and migrations, DataStore for settings
• Previews, fake DAOs, ViewModel unit tests and Compose UI tests

67 pages, 25 diagrams plus a chapter-opener graphic for every chapter, a checklist and a cheat sheet. PDF and EPUB. Android the Right Way, Book 2.

Not sure yet? Read the free sample first: the cover, the full table of contents and all of Chapter 4, "State Without the Confusion", at https://payhip.com/b/LsD1t

Also in a bundle: Everything Bundle: all 11 ebooks, $89 · Android Bundle: 5 ebooks, $49. Code RIGHTWAY20 = 20% off any order through Oct 31.