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An iOS Developer Takes on Android

nfarina.com

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Re: An iOS Developer Takes on Android

#21

Post by starwed »

al_james wrote: post #5

Interestingly (but inevitably) as a java developer who first learned Android and then moved to iOS, the sticking points he mentions are exactly the same ones I found, but the other way around. I think Eclipse makes sense if you think like a java coder, Xcode not so much, and Objective-C will fry your mind... That said, Eclipse and the Android SDK is a pain to install even if you are a java wizard.

>That said, Eclipse and the Android SDK is a pain to install even if you are a java wizard.

Really? I don't remember it being too bad, and I didn't start learning java until I had them installed! Although this was just a year ago, so perhaps older versions were less friendly.

Re: An iOS Developer Takes on Android

#22

Post by reidmain »

Why do you "have to kiss that silky smooth scrolling goodbye" if you setup your UITableViewCells in Interface Builder?

I've used it for all of my apps and the scrolling is just as fast as any of Apple's native apps. Interface Builder just packages up all that initial layout code and then it is executed when the nib when it is unpackaged. After that there is no difference.

Re: An iOS Developer Takes on Android

#23

Post by angry-hacker »

nextparadigms wrote: post #3
flyosity wrote: post #2

As an iOS developer, this is probably the best comparison between iOS and Android development that I've read. I'm pretty scared of Eclipse and the slow-as-hell emulator doesn't sound fun, but coding layouts that don't involve lots of "how tall is this text for this given width?" calculations is a welcome addition.

The emulator is very slow indeed, but they talked about it at I/O and they said they will improve it this fall with hardware acceleration (they think lack of it was the biggest issue). Another smaller issue would be that the Android emulator is basically running "ARM hardware" on top of x86 (it's not just a fake simulator like the one for iOS). They're also bringing a new UI builder this fall. They talk about all of…

Wow, thank you so much for that information about the new UI builder... it looks awesome. Do we have anything more specific than just "fall" about the release date?

Re: An iOS Developer Takes on Android

#24

Post by Yhippa »

What a great comparison. Admittedly I haven't researched this but I was surprised to read that the UI components in iOS were based on OpenGL. That's pretty cool! Hats off to Android for their layout manager. I like when I use an app on Honeycomb that scales well as opposed to blowing up the pixels to fill the screen.

Re: An iOS Developer Takes on Android

#25

Post by gmac »

ThomPete wrote: post #17

What a wonderful approach to development. Skip the ideological critiquing and start shipping some awesome products.. I guess that is really what separates the great developer from the good developer.

Agreed, the attitude is refreshing. Nice quote:

Java is a high level programming language. It’s unproductive to have an opinion about it.

Re: An iOS Developer Takes on Android

#26

Post by wallflower »

nextparadigms wrote: post #3
flyosity wrote: post #2

As an iOS developer, this is probably the best comparison between iOS and Android development that I've read. I'm pretty scared of Eclipse and the slow-as-hell emulator doesn't sound fun, but coding layouts that don't involve lots of "how tall is this text for this given width?" calculations is a welcome addition.

The emulator is very slow indeed, but they talked about it at I/O and they said they will improve it this fall with hardware acceleration (they think lack of it was the biggest issue). Another smaller issue would be that the Android emulator is basically running "ARM hardware" on top of x86 (it's not just a fake simulator like the one for iOS). They're also bringing a new UI builder this fall. They talk about all of…

Emulator snapshots help the initial bootup time

Run adb install and adb uninstall from a command terminal to get a little bit faster deploys.

We almost never run the debugger in Debug mode, we run it in Run mode (any runtime errors you can debug later from the stacktrace and how you got there)

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4842612/how-do-you-save-a...

Re: An iOS Developer Takes on Android

#27

Post by napierzaza »

reidmain wrote: post #22

Why do you "have to kiss that silky smooth scrolling goodbye" if you setup your UITableViewCells in Interface Builder? I've used it for all of my apps and the scrolling is just as fast as any of Apple's native apps. Interface Builder just packages up all that initial layout code and then it is executed when the nib when it is unpackaged. After that there is no difference.

I also don't think it's particularly hard to do the x,y frame setups either. Just start by drawing boxes on a piece of paper. Figure how things interrelate, make the code, tweak the margins.

Re: An iOS Developer Takes on Android

#28

Post by qeorge »

flyosity wrote: post #2

As an iOS developer, this is probably the best comparison between iOS and Android development that I've read. I'm pretty scared of Eclipse and the slow-as-hell emulator doesn't sound fun, but coding layouts that don't involve lots of "how tall is this text for this given width?" calculations is a welcome addition.

I jumped into Android development about a month ago, and after a slow start its really been fun. I hated Eclipse at first, but it gets a lot better with time.

The emulator though - don't bother. The author is not exaggerating about several minutes to load. Just buy an Android phone and debug on that, or you'll spend more time cursing at the emulator than coding.

Re: An iOS Developer Takes on Android

#29

Post by xcode »

Few Comments.

1. The most important thing to think about and say is the market share, fragmentation, monetization issues. Article doesn't pay enough attention to this it, but it still drives why we do what we do. (save, the author was egged on to make the app by their users).

A paragraph would be useful. Perhaps something like.

Fundamentally, Android is the platform you have to be on to defend the turf. It generally wont make a lot of money, but you have to be there to protect & project mind share. Additionally, it is the dominant mobile platform.

2. Development Tools. You can use IntelliJ Idea. Its a Mature Development Platform, and gives you many options. The article doesn't make any strong arguments against eclipse. The installation/getting started was more involved, but personally, it took me an hour or so, so I don't think it is a big deal. It is useful to separate opinions from facts. Personally, I use emacs bindings in all my editors, and Eclipse is pretty nice to me in general.

3. UI Design Tools This section is written in a way that projects inaccurate information. It implies that you have to use XML as opposed to using a Interface Builder interface. This is not true - there is indeed a drag and drop interface akin to IB in android. The author mentions it as a preview tool. Indeed it is also a design tool.

Re: An iOS Developer Takes on Android

#30

Post by wccrawford »

mricardo wrote: post #16
al_james wrote: post #5

Interestingly (but inevitably) as a java developer who first learned Android and then moved to iOS, the sticking points he mentions are exactly the same ones I found, but the other way around. I think Eclipse makes sense if you think like a java coder, Xcode not so much, and Objective-C will fry your mind... That said, Eclipse and the Android SDK is a pain to install even if you are a java wizard.

"That said, Eclipse and the Android SDK is a pain to install even if you are a java wizard." Why? I just followed Google's instructions and it was breeze to install Android SDK...

It wasn't always so easy.

My first install went pretty well. Then I upgraded my Linux box and installing it didn't go well. So I upgraded to the newest Eclipse and it worked okay.

Then I upgrade Eclipse and it broke, so I went back.

Then I tried to install it on Windows and it was so painful that I just gave up and remoted into my Linux box.

Recently, I tried Windows again and it went like a dream.

Installing Eclipse and Android SDK should be easy right now, but they weren't always.

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