
Android Studio 2.2 - dvdyzag
https://android-developers.blogspot.com/2016/09/android-studio-2-2.html
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kyriakos
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?

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cageface
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.

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sosborn
IB is perfectly fine for most apps. When you feel constricted it is easy
enough to accomplish what you want in code.

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Nullabillity
What happens if you try to open an iPhone app on an iPad? What happens if you
try to open an Android phone app on an Android tablet?

That's the difference between IB and Android's layout system.

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JimDabell
It's really not – I think you're working with outdated knowledge from several
years ago. An "iPhone app" is one specifically built for iPhones. That's not
the norm these days. Normally you would build an iOS app with universal
storyboards that would work for both iPhones and iPads. Normally opening an
iOS application on an iPad would result in a layout that works well for iPads.

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eggy
I've dabbled in Android dev, but have always lagged due to not really liking
Java. Android Studio was a pleasant experience for me when I tried it this
year, and now that C/C++ NDK support is better in this release I am going to
give it another go.

I almost feel like I should just go completely Android given the numbers of
devices out there is overwhelming compared with Windows/iOS/OS X combined. I
will keep up with my other PLs and things simply through osmosis. It's time to
join the Borg!

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pjmlp
Just be aware that C and C++ are really meant for programming games, bringing
code from other platforms or improve performance.

Trying to write an app that isn't a game will make you enjoy the pleasures of
JNI calls, given the APIs exposed to the NDK.

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eggy
I know, since my first attempt was in Java to create a simple app. I know the
NDK can be used to create OpenGLES guis, and access the sensors, but for a
traditional app it's a lot of work.

Syntax is a subjective thing; I just don't like Java. I was hoping Google was
going to come up with something (other than Go), for Android.

I have tried a lot of the work arounds, and simply put, Java is the way to do
Android right, so I guess I need to get over it!

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pjmlp
Yes, they have done a Reddit AMA a few months ago where they re-stated what
they keep saying every time someone asks for an alternative at Google IO.

Java is and will keep being the only main language on Android, with a little
help from C++ when needed.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/4tm8i6/were_on_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/4tm8i6/were_on_the_android_engineering_team_and_built/d5ilrui)

I am on a similar route, but I do like Java, what I dislike is their fork that
prevents me to fully use Java™.

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faitswulff
I tried Android Studio around 2 years ago. Is the emulator any better? It used
to bring my computer to its knees.

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Larrikin
Running a real ARM emulator is still slow but for most things running an intel
emulator with haxm will be fine. An actual device will be faster but the
emulator will be suitable for simple test

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hackerboos
You can use Genymotion is which pretty quick even on my Macbook Pro 2011
machine.

Edit: Looks like it's not longer free.

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shadowmint
Yay, no more 'modern makefile' nonsense, the native stuff is now officially
supporting cmake in their build workflow!

[https://developer.android.com/studio/projects/add-native-
cod...](https://developer.android.com/studio/projects/add-native-code.html)

Like cmake or not, this is a really really great change for the whole workflow
of using native plugins.

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namelezz
C++ Code Editing & CMake Support. Been waiting for this. Love that android
studio is getting better.

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pjmlp
Yes, the experience is much better. Sadly the NDK APIs are still the same.

Also be ware that at least during the beta period, the CMake build files had
better support than Android.mk ones.

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_RPM
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.

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habosa
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.

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AstralStorm
It is not the IDE per se (300 MB RSS or so), but Java allocating some 2 GB
heap per process, which also includes gradle daemon and compilers.

This can easily eat a bunch of ram, making the OS swap. Seems OS X has extra
bad policy of swapping.

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Aaargh20318
I gave Android Studio 8GB of heap space to play with, and it still manages to
run out. WTF.

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neelkadia
yeah! There is too much thing yet to explore since I'm using this for some 7
years. Too many things untouched and amazed me.

