8 ms·

I started using Xamarin to develop an Android app, expecting the Xamarin platform to be some gross in-between which only exists to squeeze just a few more devel

I started using Xamarin to develop an Android app, expecting the Xamarin platform to be some gross in-between which only exists to squeeze just a few more developers onto C#. But, no joke, it's a BETTER experience than Android Studio. I had a much better time using Xamarin Studio (on OS X) and Visual Studio with Xamarin (on Windows) than I ever did with Android Studio. And not just because of the tools: C# provides so many great features that make Android development awesome on it. And the API is essentially the same as the true Android Java API; I found myself googling "start an activity on Android" rather than "Xamarin start an activity on Android" because it's all done the same way. I normally don't obsess about my code looking clean and beautiful, but when I wrote my simple app in C# it shorter and easier to read than when I did it in the Android Studio.

pjmlp 10y ago
I still don't understand how Microsoft was able to provide a better debugging and tooling experience for Android, than Google itself for their own OS, although Android Studio 2.2 finally seems to be usable.
- Delmania 10y ago
  > I still don't understand how Microsoft was able to provide a better debugging and tooling experience for Android, than Google itself for their own OS, although Android Studio 2.2 finally seems to be usable. Visual Studio was first released in 1997, the company has 20 years experience in designing and building tooling. I believe they also have a very firm dogfooding policy, and some very intelligent people work there. Google changed the search engine landscape and created the only competitor to the iPhone, but building tools and tooling is definitely not a key strength.
  - geldan 10y ago
    Except browser tooling, where they are far ahead of others.
    - mattmanser 10y ago
      Compared to VS, chrome dev tools are bloody awful. There are some incredibly annoying basic missing features in Chrome dev tools. Like you still can't just hover over a variable, you inexplicably need to highlight it. Functionality that IE dev toolbar had 10 years ago. And don't even get me started on their shitty black boxing solution, something that should be as easy as right clicking on the file you want to black box, but no, time for some bloody regex foo. It's better than Firefox + IE, by it's not better than proper IDEs by a long shot. And it's got "designed by a programmer" written all over it, the UX is awful.
      - oblio 10y ago
        Well, on the other hand, while debugging, if I recall correctly, in Eclipse you can select an (almost) arbitrary section of code and evaluate it. In Visual Studio for the same thing you have to use the clunky "Watches" feature. So even VS can improve.
        dsp1234 10y ago
        In Visual Studio for the same thing you have to use the clunky "Watches" feature. VS has the 'immediate window' which allows you to execute (almost) any statement within the context of the local scope, including intellisense and autocomplete.
        tracker1 10y ago
        Caveat to the use of lambdas... Where, ironically the last time I used .Net was what I needed to inspect the most were subsets of collections or the results of other queries... I always used the function methods for linq over the language extension.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        Locke1689 10y ago
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    Surely a few of those PhDs able to draw inverted tree algorithms on the whiteboard should be capable of producing a proper IDE that doesn't hang the computer all the time, an OS simulator and get their mind around how to have an actual working build system for NDK users.
    - fuck_google 10y ago
      Perhaps they just don't care about such menial matters because everyone knows they are above that.
  - em500 10y ago
    But Android Studio is basically IntelliJ IDEA, which is not that much younger at 15 years.
    - mattmanser 10y ago
      The parent's point was that MS have the institutional memory and expertise that you don't get by simply forking someone else's codebase.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
alistproducer2 10y ago
For me, the biggest downside to AS is its reliance on graddle. I used AS pretty extensively and I honestly feel like the Eclipse workflow was much better. I'm curious about Xamarin. I've been weary of cross platform tools since the days of trying to use phone gap but I understand the current gen of tools are much better.
- mattleibow 10y ago
  Xamarin does not "wrap" the API in the traditional, it just provides a binding - calling a method in C# actually calls the underlying native method. The classes are just proxy classes and do not actually have anything more/less that does not exist in native code.
Nullabillity 10y ago
Did you try Kotlin?

pjmlp 10y ago

I still don't understand how Microsoft was able to provide a better debugging and tooling experience for Android, than Google itself for their own OS, although Android Studio 2.2 finally seems to be usable.

Delmania 10y ago
> I still don't understand how Microsoft was able to provide a better debugging and tooling experience for Android, than Google itself for their own OS, although Android Studio 2.2 finally seems to be usable. Visual Studio was first released in 1997, the company has 20 years experience in designing and building tooling. I believe they also have a very firm dogfooding policy, and some very intelligent people work there. Google changed the search engine landscape and created the only competitor to the iPhone, but building tools and tooling is definitely not a key strength.
- geldan 10y ago
  Except browser tooling, where they are far ahead of others.
  - mattmanser 10y ago
    Compared to VS, chrome dev tools are bloody awful. There are some incredibly annoying basic missing features in Chrome dev tools. Like you still can't just hover over a variable, you inexplicably need to highlight it. Functionality that IE dev toolbar had 10 years ago. And don't even get me started on their shitty black boxing solution, something that should be as easy as right clicking on the file you want to black box, but no, time for some bloody regex foo. It's better than Firefox + IE, by it's not better than proper IDEs by a long shot. And it's got "designed by a programmer" written all over it, the UX is awful.
    - oblio 10y ago
      Well, on the other hand, while debugging, if I recall correctly, in Eclipse you can select an (almost) arbitrary section of code and evaluate it. In Visual Studio for the same thing you have to use the clunky "Watches" feature. So even VS can improve.
      - dsp1234 10y ago
        In Visual Studio for the same thing you have to use the clunky "Watches" feature. VS has the 'immediate window' which allows you to execute (almost) any statement within the context of the local scope, including intellisense and autocomplete.
        tracker1 10y ago
        Caveat to the use of lambdas... Where, ironically the last time I used .Net was what I needed to inspect the most were subsets of collections or the results of other queries... I always used the function methods for linq over the language extension.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        Locke1689 10y ago
- pjmlp 10y ago
  Surely a few of those PhDs able to draw inverted tree algorithms on the whiteboard should be capable of producing a proper IDE that doesn't hang the computer all the time, an OS simulator and get their mind around how to have an actual working build system for NDK users.
  - fuck_google 10y ago
    Perhaps they just don't care about such menial matters because everyone knows they are above that.
- em500 10y ago
  But Android Studio is basically IntelliJ IDEA, which is not that much younger at 15 years.
  - mattmanser 10y ago
    The parent's point was that MS have the institutional memory and expertise that you don't get by simply forking someone else's codebase.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

alistproducer2 10y ago

For me, the biggest downside to AS is its reliance on graddle. I used AS pretty extensively and I honestly feel like the Eclipse workflow was much better. I'm curious about Xamarin. I've been weary of cross platform tools since the days of trying to use phone gap but I understand the current gen of tools are much better.

mattleibow 10y ago
Xamarin does not "wrap" the API in the traditional, it just provides a binding - calling a method in C# actually calls the underlying native method. The classes are just proxy classes and do not actually have anything more/less that does not exist in native code.

Nullabillity 10y ago

Did you try Kotlin?