Android Apprenticeship

I started Android dev using with Eclipse. Moving to Android Studio made everything much, much smoother (except for builds, which take slightly longer now).

Android Studio is much better for showing views in multiple form factors.

Another important step, using an Atom Based image + Intel Hardware Acceleration Module (http://software.intel.com/en-us/android/articles/installatio...).

This reduces load time from about 2+ minutes to 15 seconds and similarly makes debugging apps much, much smoother.

Things that still bother me (as a converted iOS developer):

  * Java's lack of anonymous functions (blocks in iOS)
  * having to design for many more form factors
  * no standard core data function
  * not being able to ignore Android 2.* market share (seriously, this lacks even a simple Action Bar)
  * managing 4+ pixel densities for assets

Most students do more.

I could write a book full of Eclipse annoyances. I could build up a real hot hatred over it being a fraud of a GUI. The architecture is ridiculous and is the root cause of much of the UI suckage. But a lot of the sharp edges have been knocked off and the Android refactorings have become very impressive. I'll never love it. But I can use it.

NetBeans, IDEA, and VS used to all be markedly better. Now they are just maybe somewhat better. Yes it's a shame Google can't use NetBeans. But. Meh.

Back in the day, I even got a contract for writing a book on Visual J++ before Sun sued it out of existence in part because. at the time (what was it? 15 years ago?) I was pissed at how awful Sun's toolchain was and I thought they deserved to lose control of Java to Microsoft.

Now, I can't get too excited as long as code completion, debugging, and refactoring work smoothly.