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Android Studio 3.2

android-developers.googleblog.com

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Re: Android Studio 3.2

#51

Post by topspin »

Scarbutt wrote: post #45
maxsilver wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have to say it's such a giant bloated thing that it really does not make me want to write native code. Why? You can write (and compile, and test) native code without ever touching Android Studio. I would think any like/hate of IntelliJ (Android Studio) should have no bearing on whether you choose to write native Android code or not. It would be like saying, "CLion is such a giant bloated thing that I never want t…

If you are into masochism, sure, use Java without an IDE ;)

Hmm. I don't find that terribly masochistic. If you know the language, the basic java.* classes and your usual third parties libraries (guava, commons, etc.) well enough you can get a long way without and IDE. I've done a great deal of work -- typically maintenance and troubleshooting -- just cloning a repo and working in vim. I avoid any degree of dependence on IDEs for any part of building, packaging, etc. so... why bother with an IDE unless you really need IDE features?

Re: Android Studio 3.2

#52

Post by kristianp »

ivankolev wrote: post #28
jontro wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like haxm has the best performance, however you might want to use hyper-v if you're running other hyper-v containers since it clashes... https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32226559/making-hyper-v-...

Newest windows versions allow running docker and the android emulator side by side,through windows container platform

Do you have a link to show how to do that? Sounds useful, but the only reference I've found to that is to do it from Visual Studio and using Xamarin C# and not 'native' Java.

Re: Android Studio 3.2

#53

Post by jrs95 »

TekMol wrote: post #12
kuschku wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I open 2 web apps at the same time, and the phone crashes (all RAM exhausted). I open a web app, and it lags horribly for minutes before becoming even semi-usable. This is on a Nexus 5X, using stock Android. Web apps are a complete joke right now. Entirely useless. I always install native apps, if available — even if I know I’ll uninstall it 5 minutes later — because the alternative is entirely unusable on my device.

That does not make sense. Web apps do not consume more resources then websites. And usually less then native apps. I never had them crash any phone.

Perhaps android apps are relatively resource intensive or inefficient, but in terms of "web apps" like SPAs vs server rendered websites, web apps are doing more on the client. They inherently use more resources. Electron apps don't tend to have awful performance characteristics on the desktop just because they can't share the underlying Chrome instance, opening the same apps (like Slack) in the browser is only marginally better. And if native resource consumption on Android is really that bad, that would be pretty unique for that platform. iOS and desktop platforms definitely have much more efficient native apps than web apps.

However making it more difficult to crash the device is a definite advantage, you're right about that. Although I very rarely have native apps crash my devices anyways. I can't remember a time it's happened on my phone, and on my desktop it's usually a device driver issue combined with a game that causes an issue. Definitely an edge case and not something I encounter with native applications in general.

Re: Android Studio 3.2

#54

Post by aikah »

dvh wrote: post #31
foobaw wrote: post #5

Do the emulator and compiler still require SSDs and 16GB+ RAM to be usable? I love Android Studio but it used to always feel very heavy-weight.

I'm using almost daily Android studio on Celeron J3455 with 4GB ram on Ubuntu 16.04 64bit and it's usable. I mostly do WebView apps, it is also on some cheap SSD.

> I'm using almost daily Android studio on Celeron J3455 with 4GB ram on Ubuntu 16.04 64bit and it's usable. I mostly do WebView apps, it is also on some cheap SSD.

I don't think it's possible to run the emulator with more than 5 FPS with this kind of set up. Let alone the editor itself which frankly runs like crap on low end hardware. The irony is that eclipse was much much faster in constrained environments. It's like IntellJ spends its time indexing and when it's done it's doing some more indexing just for kicks.

Re: Android Studio 3.2

#55

Post by kuschku »

TekMol wrote: post #12
kuschku wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I open 2 web apps at the same time, and the phone crashes (all RAM exhausted). I open a web app, and it lags horribly for minutes before becoming even semi-usable. This is on a Nexus 5X, using stock Android. Web apps are a complete joke right now. Entirely useless. I always install native apps, if available — even if I know I’ll uninstall it 5 minutes later — because the alternative is entirely unusable on my device.

That does not make sense. Web apps do not consume more resources then websites. And usually less then native apps. I never had them crash any phone.

Too many websites at the same time cause the same issue.

If I open a site like cnn.com without an adblocker, all apps running in background (even e.g. spotify if I'm listening to music) are force closed because the phone runs low on RAM.

Every website or web app I've used so far has used > 100-200M RAM, while a well developed Android app stays below 20-50M.

My phone has 2GB RAM, 1GB is used by the OS, 500-800M are used by Google Play Services, and a web browser with 1-2 tabs takes another 200M of RAM.

As soon as I open a website any more complex than HN, everything feels sluggish.

Re: Android Studio 3.2

#56

Post by balladeer »

TekMol wrote: post #6

I try Android Studio for a bit every now and then. I have to say it's such a giant bloated thing that it really does not make me want to write native code. Fortunately, there is a lot of great stuff going on with Progressive Web Apps now. I hope that they will be the future. Developing for the browser is so much leaner.

I am talking strictly about Android Studio and not the end results i.e. the apps.

Giant? It's smaller than Xcode you know :)

Bloated? Yes, so bloated! As an Android developer this is my biggest complaint from the ecosystem after the fragmentation though Google is trying to fix that with Treble but they are just not enough for the Studio. It was amazingly frustrating and pathetic to work with it couple of years back and it still is.

My entire team is stuck on old Android Studio versions. I was the only one trying to live on the edge (and by that I mean stable channel) but for past few months I have just stopped upgrading Studio. It never fails to break the entire damn setup upon any upgrade. Like any release!

Re: Android Studio 3.2

#57

Post by balladeer »

topspin wrote: post #51
Scarbutt wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are into masochism, sure, use Java without an IDE ;)

Hmm. I don't find that terribly masochistic. If you know the language, the basic java.* classes and your usual third parties libraries (guava, commons, etc.) well enough you can get a long way without and IDE. I've done a great deal of work -- typically maintenance and troubleshooting -- just cloning a repo and working in vim. I avoid any degree of dependence on IDEs for any part of building, packaging, etc. so... wh…

> unless you really need IDE features

and that's very often if you are a Java/Android dev. Even features like auto complete (let alone with prediction) is very hard to get right elsewhere, let's say, somewhere like Vim. Not just the language, there's Android SDK itself and other libraries. But, if you count "not needing auto complete etc" as part of "know the language well enough" or that they trivial enough then, well, I rest my case.

Re: Android Studio 3.2

#58

Post by jrs95 »

russellbeattie wrote: post #50
lokedhs wrote: post #48

I have used IntelliJ IDEA since the early 2000's and used it for Android development since Android first came out. It used to be an amazing experience, and when the news came out that Google was going to switch to IDEA for their official tools instead of going with that Eclipse I was thrilled. Finally everybody was going to able to know just how fast and efficient Android development can be. How wrong I was. When And…

Gradle is pure insanity. Take a JVM-based scripting language that no one uses, and base an entire build-tool around it - complete with a custom DSL - that is so slow it needs to be run in the background as a service to be even somewhat performant, and make sure that each new version somehow breaks older build scripts so that you're constantly being prompted to update, and then being prompted to fix whatever the updat…

Maven is very unintuitive though, at least Gradle does a better job on the CLI interface. Hopefully we'll get better options on the JVM in the future.

Re: Android Studio 3.2

#59

Post by Jaruzel »

foobaw wrote: post #5

Do the emulator and compiler still require SSDs and 16GB+ RAM to be usable? I love Android Studio but it used to always feel very heavy-weight.

16Gb, Standard HDD, Mid range i5 processor. It's sluggish as hell. Takes an age to start up, the gui is slow, and compiling even a basic app taks forever, with much disk thrashing.

I've given up, and recently uninstalled it. I'm going to try and develop android apps using Xamarin in Visual Studio instead (as I have that anyway for Windows dev).

Re: Android Studio 3.2

#60

Post by topspin »

balladeer wrote: post #57
topspin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. I don't find that terribly masochistic. If you know the language, the basic java.* classes and your usual third parties libraries (guava, commons, etc.) well enough you can get a long way without and IDE. I've done a great deal of work -- typically maintenance and troubleshooting -- just cloning a repo and working in vim. I avoid any degree of dependence on IDEs for any part of building, packaging, etc. so... wh…

> unless you really need IDE features and that's very often if you are a Java/Android dev. Even features like auto complete (let alone with prediction) is very hard to get right elsewhere, let's say, somewhere like Vim. Not just the language, there's Android SDK itself and other libraries. But, if you count "not needing auto complete etc" as part of "know the language well enough" or that they trivial enough then, we…

> very hard to get right elsewhere

I wrote substantial systems before there were any Java IDEs. Nothing hard about it. Write a lot of code and it's easy. If that disturbs you I'm sorry, but you should allow that there are people with more skill than perhaps you've been exposed to.

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