

AndroidKickstartR: Start your next Android app in 10 seconds - bjonathan
http://www.androidkickstartr.com/

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anigbrowl
Enough with the linkbait pitches. Tell me it's easy, great, I could be
interested. Tell me it only takes 10 seconds. that's BS. Look, I just picked
up a soldering iron! My new hardware project is underway in only _2 seconds!!_
\- 5 times faster than AndroidKickstartR by simply switching to dedicated
hardware!

(cue a slew of blog posts about starting your next _________ project in only
100 millseconds, because that's about how long the human brain takes to form a
new thought.)

Seriously, there's such a thing as overselling. Give me less wank and better
inline documentation. I like the concept a good deal, but not the way it is
presented.

~~~
zachlipton
Really. This is Hacker News and we're presumably interested in a little more
depth.

There's no sense in optimizing the "start building an Android app" process in
and of itself. If you ignore the time it takes to launch Eclipse (which, to be
fair, runs about 45 minutes), I can start an Android app project in less than
10 seconds too, not counting the time it takes to create a github repo. The
important part is what happens after the project is set up: building and
maintaining your software.

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zachalexander
I'd be interested to hear more experienced Android devs compare and contrast
this project with Android Bootstrap:

<http://www.androidbootstrap.com/>

which I'm thinking of trying out once I'm done with my current app.

~~~
uxp
I'm definitely not more experienced than most, but I've always found myself
weaving in and out of frameworks and libraries when I develop to the extent
that any Bootstrap tools I've ever used as a starting point have probably cost
me as much time removing what I don't need from them as starting from absolute
scratch and only including things I need as I need them. Adding libraries in
both Maven-based Android (I'm a stupid Vim Android developer) and Xcode iOS
apps really isn't difficult. But that's only my personal opinion.

That said, this seems to populate the extensive layout and values resource
directories, which is always the most tedious part of assembling a basic
working Android app, where as Android Bootstrap doesn't have as many options
and only populates the basic resources.

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aguynamedrich
Looks cool, but also looks just like it's aspiring to be Android Bootstrap
which already exists. I don't use either, because application setup isn't
really the big pain point of Android development. I'd love to see this effort
being focused on something with more value, but I applaud the effort
regardless.

Edit:

I judged too quickly, and this is really cool. I did a quick setup from both
Android Bootstrap and Android KickstartR. Android KickstartR worked with very
minimal effort, and while there were a few things I had to do manually in
Eclipse because of some weirdness in the latest Android toolkit (set JDK
compiler to 1.6 to fix attribute errors, rename the projects...the usual), it
worked and it wasn't so think with someone else's coding and project setup
style that I could easily get cranking on this. When I set up from Android
Bootstrap, it flat out didn't work with a simple Import from Eclipse and when
I browsed through the source files, it looks really thick with boiler plate
code. Bootstrap looked more like an app in a box and less like an actual
bootstrap or kick start for my own app.

This KickstartR thing can go a long way actually if it maintains the
lightweight feel. I don't like that AB uses Roboguice for that reason (as an
example of what I mean about lightweight vs heavy-handed in this case). The
second you introduce that by default, as seems to be the case in AB, you're
now tied to that whether you like it or not. I personally gave Roboguice a try
and just didn't think it added value for me and wasn't my style. I have other
ways of achieving the same benefits that fit my style better, so I'd rather
not have it, or at least have the option to remove it.

Something cool for this KickstartR would be to support arbitrary libs and not
just the really popular ones. For example, I published my own lib which
currently only I'm using AFAIK. But regardless, I use this lib in all of my
own work. It would be nice to add a reference from that here, especially since
I publish a jar with my library so it would be as easy as copying my jar into
the libs directory. A former coworker of mine did the same, and I'd love to
grab his libs in the process as well (as well as things like http-request,
etc).

Sorry about the quick judgment...nice work.

~~~
donnfelker
I'm the author of android bootstrap. Its built to work with maven and
particular libs that are very common. Its very opinionated and will evolve
over time. Each tool has their own value prop. Bootstrap is one for a example
app or template while kickstatr is different. These tools are very useful and
save a ton of time. Try to get roboguice 2 working with action bar sherlock
with maven in under 10 minutes without a template/generator. Yeah good luck.
Now you'll see the value of both/either.

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alexholehouse
I'm about to buy a new phone, and I'm going to get an iPhone 5. The primary
reason is not because it's (necessarily) a better phone than any Android
phones, or because iOS6 is better, but because I _can't_ spend three weeks
building an iPhone app _anywhere_ nearly as I could an Android one. I don't
have the time, or even close to having the time, but I know with an Android
phone I would do it anyway, and it would probably just derail the other 30
things I don't have time for. (For the record, I have built an iPhone app
before and it's not that it's harder than building for Android in terms of
code/framework, but I don't have a Mac, a developer licence etc).

I wonder if anyone else is motivated to get an iPhone because of this? It's a
kind of bizarre situation, but one I'm so glad I identified before buying a
phone.

~~~
mtgx
You're going to wait 2 weeks for your app and any updates to be approved
anyway.

~~~
myko
I don't think you read the post properly? It said he was getting an iPhone so
he wouldn't be tempted to do development.

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danielweber
Earnest question: How is this different than what Eclipse makes for you in 10
seconds?

~~~
lallouz
it seems like the real value prop is adding popular libs to your project setup
for you. I agree, doesn't seem like it really provides all that much value.

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cryptoz
That looks neat, but the "10 seconds" thing is a bit weird. It would take me
at least 2-3 minutes to evaluate those options and download the file. Also,
it's not like "10 seconds" is an improvement on the status quo, which is like
5 seconds (or 2 seconds, if you have AIDE).

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TylerE
Trademark lawsuit in 5...4...3...

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nestlequ1k
He should have called it "AndroidBootstrap". Since Twitter Bootstrap is a
thing that this seems much more closely aligned with.

~~~
andkickstartr
AndroidBootstrap already exists, then I chose "AndroidKickstartR" ;)

~~~
nickster
What's the difference between this and AndroidBootstrap?

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andkickstartr
AndroidKickstartR is a dynamic android app generator. It helps to quickly
start a project including the libraries you want depending on your needs.
Whereas AndroidBootstrap is a more complex and complete template. So, if you
don't need some "features" you have to remove the unusable/unused code. So, it
really depends on what you need ;)

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itry
Is there some webservice for PhoneGap like applications? One where you just
paste your html and get back an android app? Thats the way I would like to
develop.

~~~
asparagui
Adobe bought the company doing that earlier this year and converted them into:
<http://html.adobe.com/edge/phonegap-build/>

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kunalk
Just curious -- has anyone here used the AndroidAnnotations library that is
included as part of this in a reasonably complex Android application? What was
your experience with it like? It seems like an interesting way to avoid having
to write a bunch of boilerplate code without any runtime performance
implications.

~~~
king_jester
I've not used it myself personally, but it seems like it doesn't really do
anything that will actually shorten development time, as you'll still be
typing a fair amount to get references to your views established with the
annotations. It seems like it could help with making more activity setup
consistent, but it is actually more useful in practice to set up base classes
for fragments, activities, and services as you'll likely be configuring class-
wide defaults in those places anyway.

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joeblau
As a developer only have surface level interaction with Android, this looks
like a great tool to get started.

~~~
camus
In my opinion, android development is easy enough to get started without this
kind of tool. There are concepts like activities , providers ,etc ... you need
to grasp that cannot be abstracted. It's like wanting to develop for a solid
app for iOs without learning obj-C,while it is possible, one would throw aways
everything the iOs framework gives ones for free.

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alainbryden
I've never done any mobile application development but I was considering
building something for my nexus. This will likely come in handy.

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Newky
10 seconds. That is too quick for me. If you are messing around perhaps thats
ok, but a project which is a click to include feels wrong for anything more
than a tiny app which does something very basic.

Immediately when I create an app like this using this, I have clicked to
include libraries. How does this import only the things that I want.

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uvTwitch
It bothers me that 'starting a new app' is a repetitive enough task that
something like this is considered useful. Is this really something anyone
ought to be be doing twice a week?

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hayksaakian
Why is this better than androidbootstrap.com ?

