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

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

#151

Post by facepalm »

e40 wrote: post #129
facepalm wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the same with all computer platforms, though. I think it is OK if companies have a limited time of support for their OS, but you can debate how long it should be. With Android, it is also the responsibility of the phone manufacturers, not just Android/Google alone.

This is certainly true of Windows (which I don't use anymore on the desktop). Until as late as Windows 7, I would do a wipe/install every couple of years, just to get my performance back to the way it was after a fresh install. I haven't done with this macOS, but I've heard of people doing this.

Even with many Linux distibutions you can't run the latest version on older Computers anymore. But at least you can probably find a special Linux for older hardware.

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

#152

Post by [deleted] »

e40 wrote: post #129
facepalm wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the same with all computer platforms, though. I think it is OK if companies have a limited time of support for their OS, but you can debate how long it should be. With Android, it is also the responsibility of the phone manufacturers, not just Android/Google alone.

This is certainly true of Windows (which I don't use anymore on the desktop). Until as late as Windows 7, I would do a wipe/install every couple of years, just to get my performance back to the way it was after a fresh install. I haven't done with this macOS, but I've heard of people doing this.

[deleted]

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

#153

Post by digi_owl »

After writing a comment elsewhere i find myself wondering if why iOS is preferred, is that once an app is launched the app can behave pretty much like they could back in the dos days.Each app its own island, having the run of the device until the user hits the home button.

Android on the other hand is more about stitching apps together into a larger whole via intents. Thus you have not not only care about what the user will see and interact when tapping the icon in the launcher directly, but also when getting a intent from another app.

And most Android apps seems to fail on the latter. Various IM apps and such have been notorious for not going back up the intent chain when hitting the back button.

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

#154

Post by raverbashing »

izacus wrote: post #141

Just like the web platform, Android is hugely improved when you leverage the community libraries and tools they provided. Gradle actually helps a lot with that, since its clear dependency management makes use of external libraries a breeze. If in 2016 you're still complaining about AsyncTasks and its management, you certanly have missed a lot of progress in the last few years. It's not unlike having people complain a…

* and its friends

* and its management

* by its scripting language

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

#155

Post by 72deluxe »

RivieraKid wrote: post #38
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…

> 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. Completely agree. I've been developing for Android since 1.0 and the complex interaction between background tasks and activity lifecycle is the worst part of Android that a significant majority of devs get wrong, introducing subtle bugs.…

Are you talking about Services and Activities or something else? I never had any problems with Services and Activities using them and connecting to them, using them etc. but I can see how an inexperienced dev could get this wrong.

Same problem goes for not understanding detachable threads in other languages (eg. keeping a reference/pointer to them and attempting to use them when you have no idea when they've finished) but that's a newbie problem. I wouldn't say that the language or design of threads was at fault if I was using it wrong.

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

#156

Post by tabulatouch »

I've never been an Android developer, but i am happy Xamarin (Forms) developer. It is not without some hassle, need to deal with a little amount of platform-specific code, but it's the way mobile development should be in 2017. Code the experience and functionality, do not loose (too much) time on platforms.

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

#157

Post by rtpg »

GeneralTspoon wrote: post #148
rtpg wrote: post #33

Kind of an OT whine relative to the contents, but I'm still extremely frustrated at how hard it is to get other languages working on Android due to the multidex-style issues. Google should be spending millions being able to get app development up and running in something like Python. Have your app up and working in 2 minutes without having to learn Java. It boggles the mind that this isn't the case, and that the curr…

The same could be said about any platform - e.g. why can't I write my iOS apps in python? Transpiling languages like that nearly always ends up messy, and adds another layer of potential bugs to the system. Taking the time to learn the platform will end up better in the long run (at least with the current state of transpilers). And as it stands, you can write Android apps with a native UI in Java, Kotlin, JS (React N…

So the multidex issue I was referring to makes it pretty hard to write things that will compile to C with the NDK.

In order to get any access to the Android APIs, you have to do C-JDK bridging through JNI. And in android VMs, there's a hard limit on the number of symbols you can reference in the lifetime of an app.

It's the equivalent of if python was like "yeah you can use the standard library, but only up to 100 functions!"

iOS, since it goes through the LLVM framework stuff, doesn't have that many barriers to transpiling from other languages. You can just do raw function calls to the OS libs. But Android doesn't allow this, forces you to go through the JNI, and makes you have to work around this symbol limit.

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

#158

Post by majewsky »

izacus wrote: post #141

Just like the web platform, Android is hugely improved when you leverage the community libraries and tools they provided. Gradle actually helps a lot with that, since its clear dependency management makes use of external libraries a breeze. If in 2016 you're still complaining about AsyncTasks and its management, you certanly have missed a lot of progress in the last few years. It's not unlike having people complain a…

I think you just proved the point of the author. I haven't done any app development yet, but from how you describe it, it seems to be as hard to keep up with it as with the JS ecosystem. No wonder then that the author has trouble keeping up with two entirely distinct ecosystems, and chooses to focus on only one.

(That said, I'm very glad that this is the top-voted comment, since it looks like a very valuable resource for lurkers who want to get into the topic.)

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

#160

Post by dzdt »

ghans wrote: post #126
0xFFC wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just Google it. http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/8/12109832/google-apps-iphone... There is so much articles and news about it. It is completely rational decision. Google like any other company at the end wants to maximize its profit, and iPhone is where the money is (Google it, 84% of profit of whole market goes to apples pocket_ I don't remember exact number). I have used HTC desire around 2011 (I don't remember the e…

Why is Google considered an IT company?

Quoting their website: Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Their entire purpose is to use technology to manage information. What does "IT" stand for again?

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