Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Android Studio 2.2

android-developers.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 81 posts

Re: Android Studio 2.2

#21

Post by habosa »

_RPM wrote: post #5

You need a pretty powerful machine to run Android Studio. It lags when I run it on my laptop with an i5 and 6 GB ram. I wonder if upgrading to a SSD will increase performance.

I spend about 80% of my day in Android Studio and It's definitely resource hungry. On my brand new MBP 13" with 16GB RAM and an i7 processor it can still make the whole thing stutter when compiling a medium to large project.

At work my desktop can handle it, but that thing has pretty unrealistic specs.

Re: Android Studio 2.2

#22

Post by yincrash »

alexkcd wrote: post #12
kyriakos wrote: post #3

I tried many times to get into android development but everytime I get put off by the complexity of the api. The amount of digging in documentation you need to do in order to implement the simplest functionality scares me. Is anyone else feeling the same way? And does anyone know if it gets better with time or is it a constant struggle?

The graphics stack in Android is badly designed. It is that way for historical reasons. Android used to do CPU-based blitting -- similar to other mobile platforms at the time: Symbian OS and Windows Pocket PC. Then the first iPhone launched & it became clear that GPU rendering was the way to go for mobile UI drawing. Rather than rebuild the graphics stack from the ground around GPU rendering, GPU support was tacked o…

For beginner use cases of the Android API, this isn't really a problem they would encounter.

Re: Android Studio 2.2

#23

Post by cageface »

kyriakos wrote: post #3

I tried many times to get into android development but everytime I get put off by the complexity of the api. The amount of digging in documentation you need to do in order to implement the simplest functionality scares me. Is anyone else feeling the same way? And does anyone know if it gets better with time or is it a constant struggle?

Some things are much more sane and well thought out than iOS. Styling and layouts, for example, are so much better than Interface Builder, which is pretty much just a toy for demos.

Other things like the way events are handled and some of the native widgets are clunky. Some of us are fed up enough with all the incidental complexity Apple puts in your way every day as a developer (provisioning, in particular), that we prefer to put up with Android's warts.

That said the native app market is feeling pretty saturated these days and I'm not sure that boning up on building responsive/progressive web apps isn't a better long term bet.

Re: Android Studio 2.2

#24

Post by johnkchow »

kyriakos wrote: post #3

I tried many times to get into android development but everytime I get put off by the complexity of the api. The amount of digging in documentation you need to do in order to implement the simplest functionality scares me. Is anyone else feeling the same way? And does anyone know if it gets better with time or is it a constant struggle?

It'd be helpful to have more context about your development experience. I've done some iOS development in the past, and as spapas82 mentioned once you understand the core Android concepts it's easy to pick up. The docs are good, and there's a lot of tutorials and small articles to get you going.

If you've never done native mobile app development (e.g. you only have background in web dev), then regardless which platform you start off with, the initial learning curve will be a bit steep. Most APIs are "lower level" than the web counterparts and there's more ceremony to piece things together since you're working in such a constrained environment (memory, CPU, battery, network speeds, inconsistent internet access, disk space).

All that said, I think Android is a _taaaad_ easier to start off with vs iOS if you're a web dev. There's the GC, the Activity model is similar to web pages and their View XML abstraction is not that far off from HTML/CSS.

Re: Android Studio 2.2

#25

Post by taneq »

kyriakos wrote: post #3

I tried many times to get into android development but everytime I get put off by the complexity of the api. The amount of digging in documentation you need to do in order to implement the simplest functionality scares me. Is anyone else feeling the same way? And does anyone know if it gets better with time or is it a constant struggle?

I don't think the API is that complex (although yeah, there's a lot in it). What really puts me off is the rate of churn of API 'best practices'. It's alleviated somewhat (in an ugly way IMO) by the XxxCompat classes but it still feels like you're running the Red Queen's race just to keep an app running on a decent range of devices.

Re: Android Studio 2.2

#26

Post by passivepinetree »

habosa wrote: post #19
kyriakos wrote: post #3

I tried many times to get into android development but everytime I get put off by the complexity of the api. The amount of digging in documentation you need to do in order to implement the simplest functionality scares me. Is anyone else feeling the same way? And does anyone know if it gets better with time or is it a constant struggle?

I've been doing Android development for ~6 years now. For the last 2 years I've been doing it full time at Google (not on the Android team). Your first impression is correct. There is a LOT to know and I am still learning new bits every day. And yes you do find most of it out by digging around in the docs or on StackOverflow. That said, it's an amazing platform to explore because no door is fully closed. Android will…

Can you offer some examples?

Re: Android Studio 2.2

#27

Post by habosa »

passivepinetree wrote: post #26
habosa wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been doing Android development for ~6 years now. For the last 2 years I've been doing it full time at Google (not on the Android team). Your first impression is correct. There is a LOT to know and I am still learning new bits every day. And yes you do find most of it out by digging around in the docs or on StackOverflow. That said, it's an amazing platform to explore because no door is fully closed. Android will…

Can you offer some examples?

Sure. My personal favorite example of an app that would only work on Android is Link Bubble [0]. Not only is the UI creative but it makes amazing use of Android extensive Intent-based sharing system, which is the one thing Android had right from the start.

Google also maintains a whole page of creative Android apps [1].

[0] - http://linkbubble.com

[1] - https://www.androidexperiments.com

Re: Android Studio 2.2

#28

Post by victornomad »

kyriakos wrote: post #3

I tried many times to get into android development but everytime I get put off by the complexity of the api. The amount of digging in documentation you need to do in order to implement the simplest functionality scares me. Is anyone else feeling the same way? And does anyone know if it gets better with time or is it a constant struggle?

after 6 years writing Android code I still struggle, specially with anything UI related. I do as well web and Qt which I find vastly superior in terms of user interface creation. If you stick to "material templates" you are ok, but as soon as you want to do things a bit differently is a pain in the ass... Theming is just horrible, and having xml files and images scattered everywhere using flat herachies is a bit annoying.

And the audio subsystem is still really bad, lots of lag which prevents android having any serious sound / music app... if you dig the forums you will find lots of really upset people complaining and willing to help improve the sound subsystem and the Android team just keep ignoring... Just to give you an example, my raspberry pi gives me 3ms of sound latency while my current flagship Android phone with Android 6.0 gives me 100ms, totally unaceptable for music related apps :(

In terms of Android Studio I use it, but I find the interface really bloated which interferes with my desktop zen. I tweaked but still dont like it, somehow i miss my tuned Eclipse of some years ago. Biggest thing since the transition to Android Studio is Gradle which I find it really good.

I just wish Android was a truly open ecosystem where we developers have more voice than asking for help in stackoverflow and using a limited set of tools. Web development might be chaotic, sometimes feeling overcomplicated but Im truly amazed and thankful by the quality, quantity and variety of tools that the comunity produces. It just feel fresh and you can do it the way you want, from a simple html and css in a single file with a notepad to the most advanced framework with linters everywhere.

Re: Android Studio 2.2

#29

Post by andretti1977 »

kyriakos wrote: post #3

I tried many times to get into android development but everytime I get put off by the complexity of the api. The amount of digging in documentation you need to do in order to implement the simplest functionality scares me. Is anyone else feeling the same way? And does anyone know if it gets better with time or is it a constant struggle?

I've been developing both android and ios apps for the last six years. Both the platform are quite complex and yes, you need to learn and get experienced a lot even if you could do "basic" apps without much troubles. And remember that if you think android is a difficult environment, you will have really harder times on the io platform!

Re: Android Studio 2.2

#30

Post by arvinsim »

kyriakos wrote: post #3

I tried many times to get into android development but everytime I get put off by the complexity of the api. The amount of digging in documentation you need to do in order to implement the simplest functionality scares me. Is anyone else feeling the same way? And does anyone know if it gets better with time or is it a constant struggle?

I am starting my first mobile using React Native now. I couldn't get into native Android programming because it seems that you need to learn a lot of scaffolding just to get to what you want.
Post reply on HN