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Introducing Android Studio

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Re: Introducing Android Studio

#61

Post by davedx »

mey wrote: post #46
ihuman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does everyone seem to hate Eclipse? I've been using for a while and I can't find reasons to dislike it.

I use Eclipse extensively personally, but the one thing that drives me nuts about it is it's general speed. Conversely I'm so well versed it in I don't have a strong desire to replace it at the center of my work flow. Just been getting better/faster machines over the years.

Same here.

I was disappointed when I bought a brand new Macbook Air last year though only to find hitting cmd-s then switching to a different tab "loses" the save if you do it too quickly (among other general slowness). It's amazing how over so many years with massive hardware increases it doesn't seem any more responsive.

Re: Introducing Android Studio

#62

Post by davesims »

ihuman wrote: post #43
untog wrote: post #2

This is huge. I've held out on Android development for many reasons, but my visceral hate for Eclipse is one of them. I know I've been able to use IntelliJ before now, but Eclipse was Google's example in tutorials, etc. Now I'm very excited to make an Android app.

Why does everyone seem to hate Eclipse? I've been using for a while and I can't find reasons to dislike it.

The feature set is fine, and when it came out it was basically revolutionary.

But over the years the architecture has developed real instability. Frequent crashes, terrible and fundamentally broken package/dependency management. Difficult to find features, inconsistent UX and a vast amount of very low-quality plugins in the ecosystem.

Then there's the extremely varied and confusing set of packages. There's even a matrix of packages and features to help you decide! But even that grid barely scratches the surface:

http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/compare.php

Using Eclipse over a period of months creates an ongoing feeling of anxiety and fear of project file corruption. Updating a plugin is a crapshoot. Dead repository links abound, installs and upgrades have a high likelihood of failing. Upgrading Eclipse itself is like playing routlette with your project file.

Two years into using IntelliJ, I'll never look back. I used to be a huge Eclipse fan, used it for many years, but it just hasn't aged well at all -- it's a layered-over Frankenstein that barely resembles its former greatness.

Re: Introducing Android Studio

#64

Post by krschultz »

ihuman wrote: post #43
untog wrote: post #2

This is huge. I've held out on Android development for many reasons, but my visceral hate for Eclipse is one of them. I know I've been able to use IntelliJ before now, but Eclipse was Google's example in tutorials, etc. Now I'm very excited to make an Android app.

Why does everyone seem to hate Eclipse? I've been using for a while and I can't find reasons to dislike it.

I try to love Eclipse, I really do. I've worked at places that make Eclipse plugins and I appreciate that it is completely FOSS. But as a full time Android developer, it just crashes too much. Multiple crashes per day, every day. It's just too distracting.

Re: Introducing Android Studio

#65

Post by Zigurd »

ihuman wrote: post #43
untog wrote: post #2

This is huge. I've held out on Android development for many reasons, but my visceral hate for Eclipse is one of them. I know I've been able to use IntelliJ before now, but Eclipse was Google's example in tutorials, etc. Now I'm very excited to make an Android app.

Why does everyone seem to hate Eclipse? I've been using for a while and I can't find reasons to dislike it.

Eclipse is a parody of a GUI.

A GUI should offer you all and only the valid operations you can perform, depending on the selected object(s). Eclipse, far too often, offers to, e.g. deploy your Android app to a server. This kills discover-ability, especially for novices. It's like feeling around blindly in a box but every third thing is a hammer that bashes you on the knuckles. No. Fun.

Eclipse comes off as a GUI pasted on a CLI, where any command can be performed at any time, and you are only told if the arguments are wrong after an attempt to execute a command. You can blame this on plugin developers not fulfilling all the contracts of all the interfaces, but, still, that's how Eclipse is in practice.

Eclipse has gotten better, and I have Stockholm Syndrome by now. But it is far worse than XCode or Visual Studio for basic usability.

Re: Introducing Android Studio

#66

Post by gknoy »

karlshea wrote: post #48
ihuman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does everyone seem to hate Eclipse? I've been using for a while and I can't find reasons to dislike it.

I've used JetBrains' products in various forms (IntelliJ IDEA, Resharper for Visual Studio, and PhpStorm) for a long time, but every couple of years I was also exposed to Eclipse (Aptana Studio, and one or two other installs that I forget what they were for). Eclipse just feels clunky and not very well designed. Like they forgot to find someone to do UX work. Plus the workspaces concept is really stupid, and the vers…

Well said. I've used Eclipse for several years, and _never_ felt that it was lacking... except perhaps in the department of finding which permutation of pieces to install. Then, I installed PyCharm (a Python IDE from JetBrains which basically is IntelliJ for Python), and was BLOWN AWAY by the polish.

It's not that it's faster. That helps. The thought that was put into how you can make it your own -- search boxes on the settings menu are mindblowing -- and the overall polish makes it extremely awesome. I expect that IntelliJ is similarly awesome for Java, because Jetbrains makes good stuff.

The few things I can think of offhand that I like about Eclipse are that I can drag tabs of code windows around and it automatically will split however I want (PyCharm doesn't let me do that as easily, though it does support split windows Just Fine), and the fact that Eclipse is a de-facto (and FREE) standard IDE that nearly everyone has examples for.

PyCharm, and IntelliJ by extension, has been the first IDE I've ever used that I've felt was worth spending money on.

Re: Introducing Android Studio

#67

Post by davesims »

m_darkTemplar wrote: post #59
ihuman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does everyone seem to hate Eclipse? I've been using for a while and I can't find reasons to dislike it.

It's slow and buggy in my experience. I work on a fairly large Android project and over time it just keeps getting slower and slower. Doing things like closing/opening files of any size can take > 5 seconds even with a good SDD and processor, and this time increases as you use it until you restart eclipse. Also it crashes more often than any other IDE I've used and lately has refused to use emacs keybindings for me.…

I've done something similar with vim and builds on the cl with Ant. I use IntelliJ quite a bit for Java heavy-lifting, but with vim bindings (which are OK, but occasionally frustrating). I flatly refuse to maintain separate build configs for dev and production ever again. I do adb and ant on the command line, and use IntelliJ only as an editor.

Re: Introducing Android Studio

#69

Post by Zigurd »

king_jester wrote: post #58
brown9-2 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if they've licensed something from JetBrains or if this "IDE" is an extensive plugin on top of the free version of IntelliJ.

It's this, they said it was based on the community (free) edition of intellij.

This is great. It would have been hard to make an IDE with the polish of IntelliJ from scratch, but, without official support from Google for Android development plugins, layout editors, etc. I had been reluctant to make the jump.

Re: Introducing Android Studio

#70

Post by guelo »

The news is that they're switching from Eclipse to IntelliJ as the base for the Android tools. The demo didn't really show too much that was new, today's Eclipse tools can show multiple screen form factors and languages just like in the demo.
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