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Well, working with Android will tell you one thing: Google is abysmally bad at designing APIs.
by _pmf_ 9y ago
Well, working with Android will tell you one thing: Google is abysmally bad at designing APIs.
- HillaryBriss 9y agoyeah. one of my favorite things is the collection of FLAG_* constants on Intent: FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP, FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TASK, FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_WHEN_TASK_RESET, FLAG_ACTIVITY_FORWARD_RESULT ... the android SDK appears to lack a coherent, overarching concept or set of guiding principles which the client programmer can internalize and rely upon. there are many special cases and inscrutable behaviors. like, sometimes you ask for a piece of work to be done by the SDK and it calls you back on your implementation of a Listener class. but, other times, you have to register a BroadcastReceiver. still other times, you have to override OnActivityResult. but, then, there are these other times when you have to create and provide a PendingIntent. you go through enough of this stuff and you start to wonder: "Did there really need to be soooo much variety in the way these SDK methods hand info back to the client? Couldn't they have standardized this?" it's almost like Google turns their (very smart) programmers loose on the SDK and never looks back. google seems to just defer entirely to their opinions and judgments. smart as these programmers are, they seem to have different tastes, different approaches to API design. and it all goes into the SDK.