One of the larger ongoing projects succeeding at Google today is the Google Developers community, which started out on March 17, 2005 as Code.Google.com when it was initially heralded on the Google Code Blog. The original Google Code blog started out with a discussion group and included two RSS feeds — one feed for updates and one for featuring a great app, tool, or API using Google code. The Google Code blog has recently evolved into the Google Developers Blog, and over the years has come to include much more than just a blog and discussion group. I will give you an overview, highlighting several available tools, products, events, groups, and extensive resources from Google Developers.

Google Developers products

If you are a Mobile Developer, there is Google Mobile Developer, where you can build, promote, earn, measure, and enhance your mobile app. If you are a Games Developer, there is Google Games Developer, where you can build games for web and mobile using Google technologies. If you are a Web Developer, there is Google Web Developer, where you can use the latest HTML5 technologies and Chrome developer tools to build cutting edge web apps. Other tools include Startup, Webmaster, and Monetization apps. Another useful tool in the Google Developers chest includes the Google Web Toolkit (GWT), which I will cover in a bit more detail below. Other technologies and tools available with Google Developers include Google+, Google Maps, Android, App Engine, Advertise, Google Apps, Google TV, and Commerce.

Google Web Toolkit (GWT)

In the world of Google Developers are many tools and resources including the Google Web Toolkit (GWT), which is a development toolkit for building and optimizing complex browser-based applications. GWT is used by many internal products at Google, including Google AdWords and Orkut. The toolkit is open source, completely free, and used by thousands of developers around the world. The GWT includes a suite of features and tools for web development including documentation for current and previous versions, the GWT Designer, which is available for download, and access to numerous GWT resources including articles, books, case studies, community, tools and libraries, presentations, issue tracking, and a blog. I will present a more in-depth overview of GWT in a future article here on the Web Developer blog.

Google Developers events

Ongoing events continue to populate the Google Developers calendar including local group meet-ups, conventions, system builds, hacks, open source development, apps for business, devcon, and conferences, just to name a few. Several specific events that were on the calendar at the time of this writing include DevFest Campania, which was an open source lab with a talking day and hackathon day. Another event included and Android Build System with Gradle, in Berlin, which included an introduction into the new Android build system based on Gradle, which is targeted to replace the current official build systems (Ant and ADT). And a Google Apps Workshop in Palermo, Italy, which was a free workshop dedicated to the professional management of corporate communication and information security.

Google Developers Showcase

Highlighting cool stuff that developers have built using Google Developer tools, the Google Developers Showcase includes over four hundred showcased applications that utilize many Google APIs such as YouTube Player API, YouTube Data API, YouTube API,  Web Audio API, WebGL, Google Earth API, among others. You can filter searches within the showcase by Product, Region, Theme, and Others. Themes include thirty-one selections including Activism, Business, Experiment, Music, Politics, Travel, and Weather.

Google Developers Live

Google Developers Live (GDL) harnesses the power of live presentations, and includes the Q & A of a developer forum and the global reach of the internet to convey live, streaming content for developers on many of Google’s platforms, including Android, Chrome, Cloud, Maps, YouTube and more. Recent shows have included Google Drive SDK, Apps Script Office Hours, App Engine Hangout- New experimental dev server for Python, YouTube Developers Live: Geofeedia, and Android Developer Lab+.

Google Developers Groups

Google Developer Groups (GDGs) are for developers who are interested in Google’s developer technology, and currently include groups in 95 countries, with 330 active and incubating groups, with 992 events and counting over the past six months. The GDG includes a Starter Guide, Chapter Requirements, Guidelines, Directory, Branding and FAQ. A quick search in the Directory provides you with the list of all GDGs sorted by country, and then in alphabetical order by name, where you can find a local chapter to join, and incubating chapters are designated with a yellow location point.

If you are looking to get into development with anything Google related and within the Google Development community, Google Developers is your single source for inspiration. If you are looking for some online training before you delve into the extensive developer tools that I’ve highlighted in this post, then you might want to first visit the Google Developers Academy, which provides a set of online classes covering many different Google developer tools and platforms. The course materials also provide developers of all skill levels with curriculum-based learning that goes beyond the traditional technical documentation.