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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

#201

Post by collyw »

echelon wrote: post #85
ClayFerguson wrote: post #17

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. Oi…

> Developers do need to pick a set of core technologies, and stick to it or a career can fall apart I bet. How boring! I'd go mad if I didn't get to work in new domains with different tools every so often.

Every so often is OK, but every a new language / set of technologies with every app means you will be writing junior to intermediate level code every time.

When we are interviewing and I see CV's that have so many technologies listed that I am fairly sure they have very little depth of knowledge to many of them.

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

#202

Post by exDM69 »

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…

> It's not unlike having people complain about JavaScript issues without ever looking at jQuery, React or newer tooling.

But this is exactly what makes being a Javascript developer a miserable experience.

And I can give Javascript some benefit of the doubt since it's a multi-vendor language with complex standardization processes and all the stakeholders have their own interests and limited financial backing. By contrast, Android is a single vendor platform with practically infinite financial and labor resources behind it.

It's just a mess. I'd expect a relatively painless experience: install dev tools, start a new project, build and go! But no, it's jumping through hoops, requires understanding a myriad of different SDK/platform versions and a constant churn in keeping your apps up to date with new versions while trying not to break backwards compatibility.

And a big part of this mess comes from the fact that device manufacturers and mobile operators are unwilling to keep old devices up to date (and Google can't force them, while I think they should with some kind of licensing contracts), leaving customers exposed to security flaws while keeping the developers churn high with multiple versions to be supported.

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

#203

Post by digi_owl »

m_fayer wrote: post #189
0xFFC wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Overall, I wouldn't say Android is poorly designed, it's just mediocre I think it is mostly have to do with company's talent pool and focus. As far as I can see (I may be wrong, this is my estimate) Google tries hard to devote best talents to 1) ads and Search and it's maintaining 2) Chrome team 3) Google apps and services online and on iPhones. After these option they try to develop Android as kinda (I don't know w…

I think you're right. Or at least, they're not devoting a certain kind of talent to Android. Look at Google's efforts on web frontend - GWT, Polymer, Angular 1/2, embracing TypeScript, RxJS, and so on. In other words, they've devoted significant resources to high-level application patterns, emerging paradigms, and in general - improving developer experience. The Chrome devtools are another example. On Android, not on…

I wonder how much that has to do with Android originating from outside Google. Never mind that Google may well be Apple's biggest hardware customer (the Chromebook Pixel seems to have been an attempt at getting employees off their Macbook addiction).

There seems to have been something of a civil war right around the launch of Android Honeycomb/3.0, as that was also when Chromebooks happened.

All of a sudden you had two platforms, both angling for "landscape" devices.

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

#204

Post by samastur »

izacus wrote: post #187
pjmlp wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C++ isn't a platform with a platform owner. Python's biggest strength that lead to its adoption was being a language with "Batteries Included".

I'm not sure about the meaningful distinction here. Programming on any platform will be greatly improved by using good (preferrably opensource) libraries. What difference does it make who made them and why? It's such a strange nitpick.

Difference is at the beginning. When I started using Python I absolutely loved that stdlib covered almost everything I thought I could need. These days packages I use mostly come from elsewhere, but at the beginning it was great.

I'm fine with Javascript development these days because I built my fundamentals years ago. I am not sure how comfortable I would be otherwise and when I meet people who are where I used to be, they often look lost.

I am also thinking about learning Android development and don't really know where to begin.

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

#205

Post by signal11 »

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…

> Gradle badly needs performance improvement

gradle --daemon is a hack, I guess, but I always use it for my builds (even aliased gradle to gradle --daemon). It's far too slow otherwise.

On newer gradle releases I believe the daemon is enabled by default.

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

#206

Post by pjmlp »

izacus wrote: post #187
pjmlp wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C++ isn't a platform with a platform owner. Python's biggest strength that lead to its adoption was being a language with "Batteries Included".

I'm not sure about the meaningful distinction here. Programming on any platform will be greatly improved by using good (preferrably opensource) libraries. What difference does it make who made them and why? It's such a strange nitpick.

Because outside the startup world, in many enterprises developers are only allowed to use sanctioned libraries outside what the platform owner advises as best practices.

So everyone suffers when anything more complex than hello world already required third party libraries, specially ones that aren't even acknowledged by Google.

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

#207

Post by pjmlp »

collyw wrote: post #201
echelon wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Developers do need to pick a set of core technologies, and stick to it or a career can fall apart I bet. How boring! I'd go mad if I didn't get to work in new domains with different tools every so often.

Every so often is OK, but every a new language / set of technologies with every app means you will be writing junior to intermediate level code every time. When we are interviewing and I see CV's that have so many technologies listed that I am fairly sure they have very little depth of knowledge to many of them.

Or worked as consultants.

On our case we are required to stay flexible and take whatever projects come when one is released from a project, it is not always possible to say "I don't do X".

So every few months there is a new stack to work on.

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

#208

Post by pjmlp »

creshal wrote: post #179
mobiuscog wrote: post #136

Android should drop Java. It's nothing like writing 'normal' Java, and the baggage that is bought along isn't worth the effort. I like Java. I hate Android development.

Do you still need to do manual malloc/free inside Java code to handle images in Android? That crap tripped me up when developing for it ca. 2011.

Yes, they optimized it and did a few changes in the way things work, but you still need to watch out.

https://developer.android.com/training/displaying-bitmaps/ma...

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

#209

Post by eddieh »

m_mueller wrote: post #31
virmundi wrote: post #6

I don't think that the person is being lazy. I've tried my hand at Android. I will continue to do so. I don't like it for the reasons enumerated in the post. The whole damn thing is a hack at this point. No one has a good generalizable architectural model for laying out an Android project. Attempting to target multiple devices is truly a pain. You can do it. You have to really, really think about. You also have to en…

I was surprised to learn that Android in 2016 doesn't even natively come with an equivalent of JavascriptCore. You have the pleasure of somehow getting V8 to run and then serialize/deserialize all your native objects manually in order to talk to it if you want javascript outside the browser. Really? From the company that is the most web native around, and even developed the most common browserless JS runtime (V8)? Go…

I maintain my own fork of JSC that I use on Android. I've been focused on reducing its size and hope that it one day can be way smaller than it currently is. I managed to get it down to less than 800kB when compiled for ARM.

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

#210

Post by gsmiro »

exDM69 wrote: post #202
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…

> It's not unlike having people complain about JavaScript issues without ever looking at jQuery, React or newer tooling. But this is exactly what makes being a Javascript developer a miserable experience. And I can give Javascript some benefit of the doubt since it's a multi-vendor language with complex standardization processes and all the stakeholders have their own interests and limited financial backing. By contr…

> It's just a mess. I'd expect a relatively painless experience: install dev tools, start a new project, build and go! But no, it's jumping through hoops, requires understanding a myriad of different SDK/platform versions and a constant churn in keeping your apps up to date with new versions while trying not to break backwards compatibility.

> And a big part of this mess comes from the fact that device manufacturers and mobile operators are unwilling to keep old devices up to date (and Google can't force them, while I think they should with some kind of licensing contracts), leaving customers exposed to security flaws while keeping the developers churn high with multiple versions to be supported.

Is it only me or there are tons of similarities to C# and the .Net environment?! More and more I feel Google just ends up with the same solution MS came up with in order to handle the diversity of vendors using its platform and their conflicting interesse.

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