Those "higher level" tools are why you need a fancy IDE for android. Had they opted for simpler tools, more like swing then you could write an app with a couple

Those "higher level" tools are why you need a fancy IDE for android. Had they opted for simpler tools, more like swing then you could write an app with a couple of text editor files instead, just as you can do it for desktop apps today. Android is actually the perfect example of adding tools to simplify development that end up making development much harder than it needs to be.