Hey Derek!
Thanks so much for the heads up and overview of your troubles! The reality of the situation is that Android Studio has changed quite a bit from when the book was written, so there are extra concerns with trying to get up and running.
We’ve dealt with a few of those issues in other threads on this forum, which could help. Also, I’m going to put together an FAQ post about trying to get up and running with newer versions of Android Studio.
As far as Compose, that was barely in Alpha when the book was released which is why I went with classic XML views for the whole thing. I happen to love Compose, but most places are still partially or fully XML for UI.
I definitely understand the frustration - just after the book came out Google made a change to AS that removed a variable I assumed was there, breaking things on page 7.
I’ll reply here once I get that FAQ together and then you can see if it helps. Otherwise, feel free to post again with specific issues and I can help from there.