The whole thing is so piecemeal it's crazy. I don't think it's Android itself, it's more like it's an open-source thing. Those people just have a completely different mindset compared to regular programmers. Like, it's easier to collaborate if every person contributes a tiny module, and each module can be upgraded on its own, so most of these projects consist of thousands of little files.

When your program compiles, there are a bunch of intermediaries and stuff. The compiler itself is this whole program that needs things set up a certain way. It's pretty crazy.

There are definitely a whole bunch of random stacks of things built to fix problems in older versions. You almost just need to spend a year finding random examples and playing around with them. Someone needs to write a book about developing for Android with only the best parts of the framework.

Ooh, and I'd start here: https://material.google.com/
It's not exactly important if you aren't planning to design a proper interface, but it's actually a surprisingly cohesive design philosophy that can be used across media. I'm starting to notice the subtleties of how Google uses it in their products.