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I am a coach for an FTC robotics team of high schoolers. We control the robots with Android phones, so we develop with Android Studio. (This is FTC's recommende

I am a coach for an FTC robotics team of high schoolers. We control the robots with Android phones, so we develop with Android Studio. (This is FTC's recommended tooling, and for all intents and purposes the only option). Teaching high schoolers to work with Android Studio was almost impossible. 1 - The author is right: The WYSIWYG GUI tools are buggy as hell and I have just have the kids dive into the XML - which brings its own set up problems. 2 - The gradle system is hard to configure but once it is right and you check in the configs you don't need to change it. 3 - It basically requires 8GB to run with any reasonable performance. Getting a set of laptops with 8GB for a non-profit is a challenge! Even with 8GB, build and deploy cycle can take 3 - 5 minutes. 4 - I do like the remote debugging. It is essential for debugging a robot with a phone that is driving around on the floor. Android 2.0 was an improvement, but it is still a challenging environment. I am a competent programmer who uses IntelliJ at work, so I don't know how other FTC coaches could possibly get a team up and running with Android Studio.

gjkood 10y ago
Fellow FTC Coach here. Couldn't agree with you more. Point 4 - Remote Debugging is an especially important one. Not only not having to connect using the cable but saving the tremendous amount of wear and tear on the phone USB connector. This is usually a big factor in robot failure due to loose connections during a competition. Thank God for inventing Duct Tape. If I didn't personally use Android Studio before it would have been a huge hurdle to teach my team to use it. Too many moving parts, the android ecosystem and the wide variety of SDKs and tooling. What would be considered as a great selling point otherwise is a burden to get setup for a bunch of middle and high schoolers.
firimari 10y ago
Upvoted because FTC is awesome and we need to encourage more people to volunteer. (FLL coach and FTC judge here, at some point those will swap)
- hluska 10y ago
  I hadn't heard of FTC before this thread and I did some Googling. The first link I found was the FIRST Tech Challenge. Is this the FTC that you're speaking about?? http://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/ftc http://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/ftc If so, what a seriously amazing group....if not, I'll update the link!
  - erichocean 10y ago
    Not the OP, but yes, that's FTC (my kids are in it).
    - hluska 10y ago
      Excellent - thanks so much!! What an immensely cool organization...I want to get my kids, especially my stepson involved in this....
maxsilver 10y ago
I agree with all of these points, but I think we might need some other tool to solve them. Getting students up and running with Android Studio seems similar to trying to teach HTML+CSS+JS, by having students start with Grunt/Gulp + WebPack/NPM + Ember + Bootstrap and more. We don't usually do that, because it's a crazy amount of complexity for someone just starting out. Most students begin with something like "edit a single HTML file to learn basic HTML+CSS+JS", and get gracefully introduced to the rest as they learn. I imagine we need an equivalent of that for Android. I don't know what specifically that would be, but it's probably not Android Studio.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  AIDE is tolerable enough at the Android development complexity level equivalent to "just edit an HTML file in a basic editor" level of web front-end development (and maybe beyond, that's just about all I've done in AIDE) and it actually runs on Android, which is nice.
ipalreadytaken 10y ago
Can't agree more. The problem might not be Android studio, it might be the state of development and needing to understand a dozen tools before you can even click "run", but either way you could spend all year teaching the students how to use the tool and still never make anything. Ironically FRC tooling is easier to use than FTC. We ending up using the browser based blocky tools and it has been great. Students don't need anything installed on their computers and can just start building.
- candiodari 10y ago
  You will find the situation far more tolerable if you just forego Android Studio tools entirely and just create GUIs in code.
NoGravitas 10y ago
100% on the 8GB thing. I have been wanting to contribute to a free Android app that I use heavily, but on my 4GB home machine, I can't even compile it, much less run the emulator at the same time. I realize that's a low end machine, but seriously.
- venkat1017 10y ago
  I used to work with below AS 2.0 on a 4GB machine with poor performance. but after updating to 2.2+,I think it won't work without 8GB.
yuhong 10y ago
Used 4GB DDR3 sticks based on 2Gbit DDR3 are not that hard to find.
- untog 10y ago
  At scale, used anything is hard to find, because you need to keep buying individual items from individual sellers.
kcorbitt 10y ago
Not a direct solution to your problem, but maybe try React Native? Getting the tooling set up initially is still a bit involved (but way easier than React for the web or Android Studio) but once you have your first view rendering to the screen there's a lot less ceremony required to actually add more features/functionality, when compared to the smorgasbord of required concepts involved in normal Android development. Also, the 2-5 second save-reload deploy cycle (down from 1+ minutes for a standard app) is even MORE important when you're first learning and just throwing stuff at a wall to see what sticks. PS FRC was my life for 2005-2009... great memories, an incredible program. Definitely instrumental in getting me to where I am today. :)
dragonbonheur 10y ago
Try to look into RFO BASIC. You will find all the required links on http://rfo-basic.com/ http://rfo-basic.com/ and links to various tools with even a compiler for that BASIC dialect that runs on the device itself. Note - Hacker's keyboard is preferred over the standard Android keyboard.

gjkood 10y ago

Fellow FTC Coach here. Couldn't agree with you more. Point 4 - Remote Debugging is an especially important one. Not only not having to connect using the cable but saving the tremendous amount of wear and tear on the phone USB connector. This is usually a big factor in robot failure due to loose connections during a competition. Thank God for inventing Duct Tape. If I didn't personally use Android Studio before it would have been a huge hurdle to teach my team to use it. Too many moving parts, the android ecosystem and the wide variety of SDKs and tooling. What would be considered as a great selling point otherwise is a burden to get setup for a bunch of middle and high schoolers.

firimari 10y ago

Upvoted because FTC is awesome and we need to encourage more people to volunteer. (FLL coach and FTC judge here, at some point those will swap)

hluska 10y ago
I hadn't heard of FTC before this thread and I did some Googling. The first link I found was the FIRST Tech Challenge. Is this the FTC that you're speaking about?? http://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/ftc http://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/ftc If so, what a seriously amazing group....if not, I'll update the link!
- erichocean 10y ago
  Not the OP, but yes, that's FTC (my kids are in it).
  - hluska 10y ago
    Excellent - thanks so much!! What an immensely cool organization...I want to get my kids, especially my stepson involved in this....

maxsilver 10y ago

I agree with all of these points, but I think we might need some other tool to solve them. Getting students up and running with Android Studio seems similar to trying to teach HTML+CSS+JS, by having students start with Grunt/Gulp + WebPack/NPM + Ember + Bootstrap and more. We don't usually do that, because it's a crazy amount of complexity for someone just starting out. Most students begin with something like "edit a single HTML file to learn basic HTML+CSS+JS", and get gracefully introduced to the rest as they learn. I imagine we need an equivalent of that for Android. I don't know what specifically that would be, but it's probably not Android Studio.

dragonwriter 10y ago
AIDE is tolerable enough at the Android development complexity level equivalent to "just edit an HTML file in a basic editor" level of web front-end development (and maybe beyond, that's just about all I've done in AIDE) and it actually runs on Android, which is nice.

ipalreadytaken 10y ago

Can't agree more. The problem might not be Android studio, it might be the state of development and needing to understand a dozen tools before you can even click "run", but either way you could spend all year teaching the students how to use the tool and still never make anything. Ironically FRC tooling is easier to use than FTC. We ending up using the browser based blocky tools and it has been great. Students don't need anything installed on their computers and can just start building.

candiodari 10y ago
You will find the situation far more tolerable if you just forego Android Studio tools entirely and just create GUIs in code.

NoGravitas 10y ago

100% on the 8GB thing. I have been wanting to contribute to a free Android app that I use heavily, but on my 4GB home machine, I can't even compile it, much less run the emulator at the same time. I realize that's a low end machine, but seriously.

venkat1017 10y ago
I used to work with below AS 2.0 on a 4GB machine with poor performance. but after updating to 2.2+,I think it won't work without 8GB.

yuhong 10y ago

Used 4GB DDR3 sticks based on 2Gbit DDR3 are not that hard to find.

untog 10y ago
At scale, used anything is hard to find, because you need to keep buying individual items from individual sellers.

kcorbitt 10y ago

Not a direct solution to your problem, but maybe try React Native? Getting the tooling set up initially is still a bit involved (but way easier than React for the web or Android Studio) but once you have your first view rendering to the screen there's a lot less ceremony required to actually add more features/functionality, when compared to the smorgasbord of required concepts involved in normal Android development. Also, the 2-5 second save-reload deploy cycle (down from 1+ minutes for a standard app) is even MORE important when you're first learning and just throwing stuff at a wall to see what sticks. PS FRC was my life for 2005-2009... great memories, an incredible program. Definitely instrumental in getting me to where I am today. :)

dragonbonheur 10y ago

Try to look into RFO BASIC. You will find all the required links on http://rfo-basic.com/ http://rfo-basic.com/ and links to various tools with even a compiler for that BASIC dialect that runs on the device itself. Note - Hacker's keyboard is preferred over the standard Android keyboard.