That’s a very fair question. We do cover view binding in the ABL app that you build in the second half of the book.
Both data binding and view binding are improved way to connect your data and UI. Data binding adds special syntax to reference objects/values in your XML, while view binding gives you typed versions of UI components in your Fragment code that you can then associate with data.
Both approaches have the same outcome (getting your data to the UI) but take different approaches to do so. Hope this helps!