Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

It’s Been Real, Android: Why I’m Retiring from Android

raptureinvenice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 342 posts

Re: It’s Been Real, Android: Why I’m Retiring from Android

#11

Post by mentos »

ryandrake wrote: post #8

Without mentioning which platform(s) I prefer, I have to agree with the author. On one hand, it's nice to be able to work cross-platform, and architecting your app such that you maximize code sharing is a worthy and satisfying goal. But quite a bit of code (the UI mainly) cannot be shared and it's kind of tiring to finish your Platform A app, look at it with pride, and then face the need to essentially re-write the e…

As a once iOS and Android Dev (before moving to game dev in UE4) I found the act of having to rewrite an app again on another platform a great way to refactor the code and do things better the second time around.

If I had to go back though I'd probably try to find a way to do things once on the web, is React Native this?

Re: It’s Been Real, Android: Why I’m Retiring from Android

#12

Post by ausjke »

I worked on android for 3 years, then did something else for 3 years, now am back to Android, there are so many vendors selling android phones, so it shall work just fine I assume? or is it getting much worse for developers(system and app developer) these days?

Re: It’s Been Real, Android: Why I’m Retiring from Android

#13

Post by cageface »

iOS has plenty of developer pain points as well, although in their case a lot of them are as much a result of dumb Apple policies as they are technical mistakes. I'm going the other way. After six years of iOS work I've had enough. I still think the web is the smart long term bet so that's where I intend to focus my energies.

Re: It’s Been Real, Android: Why I’m Retiring from Android

#14

Post by credo »

Like the op, I do both iOS and Android development work. However, as an indie, my platform preference is primarily market-driven. So most of my work has been on iOS

Unlike the OP, I like and use Android AsyncTasks. I have no problems with Android fragments either.

However, I did have a lot of other concerns with Android - primarily the low quality of Google's SDK for Android. Here is what I wrote about it https://blog.cascadesoft.net/2013/12/31/the-bigger-problem-w...

Re: It’s Been Real, Android: Why I’m Retiring from Android

#15

Post by cloudjacker »

lol, I've had those sentiments

employers are also skeptical you are content with both, I wouldn't consider it a value add unless you can land a lead position for a mobile team

aside from working on multiple platforms diluting your experience with the latest development patterns, it is just as easy to be stuck maintaining an old project or legacy code with an employer. This isn't unique to mobile of course, but multiple platforms really exacerbates how fast it happens.

Re: It’s Been Real, Android: Why I’m Retiring from Android

#16

Post by rhizome »

ryandrake wrote: post #8

Without mentioning which platform(s) I prefer, I have to agree with the author. On one hand, it's nice to be able to work cross-platform, and architecting your app such that you maximize code sharing is a worthy and satisfying goal. But quite a bit of code (the UI mainly) cannot be shared and it's kind of tiring to finish your Platform A app, look at it with pride, and then face the need to essentially re-write the e…

I don't get it. How can there then be all of these weekend tossoff games in the Play Store that work just fine? Unless I'm unclear on what you mean by "platform."

Re: It’s Been Real, Android: Why I’m Retiring from Android

#17

Post by ClayFerguson »

Developers do need to pick a set of core technologies, and stick to it or a career can fall apart I bet. I don't know from experience. I've been a Java DEV ever since MSFT tried to hijack the Java language with a proprietary version back in 1998, and I abandoned MSFT and never went back. I can imagine trying to be both iOS and Android developer would be about as insane as trying to be both .NET and Java developer. Oil and water. Doesn't mix. For me there is one and only one word that i need to hear to know I want to avoid iOS: "proprietary". I wouldn't touch any Apple product with a 10ft pole. I like open systems, and Apple is all about maintaining their closed little private invite-only walled-garden of an ecosystem. No thanks. They may be successful a while longer but "open" ALWAYS wins in the end.

Re: It’s Been Real, Android: Why I’m Retiring from Android

#18

Post by clumsysmurf »

A while back, Dianne Hackborn famously said:

"We often see questions from developers that are asking from the Android platform engineers about the kinds of design patterns and architectures they use in their apps. But the answer, maybe surprisingly, is we often don't have a strong opinion or really an opinion at all." (1)

While that may have been a lofty ideal, in practice Android has many strict requirements on how you partition your code between Activity, Fragment, ContentProvider, and Service classes. Never mind testability and all the new semi-opaque / intelligent battery optimizations Android applies to your app.

After all these years, I still find the most difficult and un-natural thing is mixing concurrency / background tasks that must outlive the UI with complex UI component lifecycles. This is a frequent and necessary thing to do, and also quite awkward. The result is unnecessary complexity that often and easily permeates the code. Dianne says they have no opinions on architecture, but where I disagree is concurrency is an architectural concern and there are definitely many corner cases & snafus mixing that with Android APIs.

(1) https://plus.google.com/+DianneHackborn/posts/FXCCYxepsDU

Re: It’s Been Real, Android: Why I’m Retiring from Android

#19

Post by gjolund »

clumsysmurf wrote: post #18

A while back, Dianne Hackborn famously said: "We often see questions from developers that are asking from the Android platform engineers about the kinds of design patterns and architectures they use in their apps. But the answer, maybe surprisingly, is we often don't have a strong opinion or really an opinion at all." (1) While that may have been a lofty ideal, in practice Android has many strict requirements on how…

This is an excellent comment, and it mirrors my experience with android also.

Most of the responses Ive gotten from coworkers is "what would you change". I have a hard time answering that.

Re: It’s Been Real, Android: Why I’m Retiring from Android

#20

Post by seibelj »

rhizome wrote: post #16
ryandrake wrote: post #8

Without mentioning which platform(s) I prefer, I have to agree with the author. On one hand, it's nice to be able to work cross-platform, and architecting your app such that you maximize code sharing is a worthy and satisfying goal. But quite a bit of code (the UI mainly) cannot be shared and it's kind of tiring to finish your Platform A app, look at it with pride, and then face the need to essentially re-write the e…

I don't get it. How can there then be all of these weekend tossoff games in the Play Store that work just fine? Unless I'm unclear on what you mean by "platform."

An app that uses native UI widgets is very different from a game which uses a graphics engine. The game compiles cross-platform with minimal changes.
Post reply on HN