12 ms·

Android Studio 3.1 Stable

wpdev_63 9y ago
Android Studio, and in turn, Jetbrain's IDE are an absolute godsend for productivity. Quick actions, macros, shortcut egornomics, etc. are top notch and make me a happy developer. I would even dare to say, it's a better IDE than Visual Studio. runs for cover
- bmpafa 9y ago
  I'm a JavaScript / typescript guy, so for me these past few years VS code has been leaps and bounds ahead of WebStorm w/ extensions,etc. But lately I've been using Datagrip for SQL stuff,and geez, did Jetbrain crush the competition w/ this product. ...once I switched the shortcuts to match VS Code's, that is
  - adl 9y ago
    Could you elaborate? VS Code is faster/leaner than WebStorm, that's for sure, but are there any specific workflows that you feel VSCode is better than WS?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - bmpafa 9y ago
      I found WebStorm a bit overwhelming when I first tried it (I was fairly new at the time), which made any workflow a little difficult for me out of the gate. That, and I remember Staples of the JS ecosystem (eg ESLint) being somewhat difficult to set up. Maybe they were simple if one knew the Jetbrain workflows, but for me, esp. compared to VS Code, it seemed a huge undertaking just to get ESLint to work. Actually, here's an SO question I posted awhile back about ESLint in WebStorm (well, intelliJ). This was shortly before I made the switch to Code. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34700062/intellij-plugin-airbnb-eslint-w-react https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34700062/intellij-plugin...
      - akx 9y ago
        These days PyCharm (and as such, probably WebStorm too) just auto-configures itself to ESlint files if it detects it's installed.
  - doubleocherry 9y ago
    +1 for Datagrip, use it everyday
  - dotancohen 9y ago
    > But lately I've been using Datagrip for SQL stuff,and geez, did Jetbrain crush the competition w/ this product. For me, "the competition" is the MySQL CLI. Is there and advantage to Datagrip assuming that one is reasonably proficient in SQL (at least the MySQL dialect)? Serious question. After running \# I've got table and field completion, and all the readline (pseudo-emacs) shortcuts work.
- jenscow 9y ago
  I'm was a long time Visual studio user (when it was called Visual C++), and Android Studio preview was my "gateway drug" into the Jetbrains IDEs. If anyone uses Resharper, I highly recommend trying Rider.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dheera 9y ago
  Almost every release of Android Studio has succeeded in breaking every single Android app I wrote. I have always had to cut and paste every class, resource, layout, one by one into a new project in order to get it to compile. I always fear pressing the "update" button.
  - barbs 9y ago
    What kind of ridiculous project structure do you have? I have never in my ~5 or so years of using Android Studio have had to do something as drastic as that. I have occasionally have had issues with updating, but this has required a tweak in the gradle file and an update of build tools, at most.
    - V-2 9y ago
      My experience (full-time Android dev) falls somewhat in the middle. This sort of compatibility breaking was fairly common back in the AS 1.X/early 2.X days. As of now, it's really rare, and usually resolves automatically.
    - sankalp_sans 9y ago
      > What kind of ridiculous project structure do you have? Obviously one that was supported in every preceding version of Android Studio. When making consumer-facing tools, it is the job of the tool maker to make sure that it doesn't break. If something works in a version, and breaks in another, guess who is to be blamed? (hint: not the user)
    - dheera 9y ago
      Let's see, I just upgraded to Android Studio 3.1, opened one of my previous ridiculously simple apps, and voila: Could not find com.android.tools.build:gradle:3.0.1. Searched in the following locations: https://jcenter.bintray.com/com/android/tools/build/gradle/3.0.1/gradle-3.0.1.pom https://jcenter.bintray.com/com/android/tools/build/gradle/3.0.1/gradle-3.0.1.jar Required by: project : Add Google Maven repository and sync project Open File Okay, I hit the "Add Google Maven repository and sync project", and now we have: Could not GET 'https://jcenter.bintray.com/org/ow2/asm/asm/5.1/asm-5.1.pom'. Received status code 502 from server: Bad Gateway Enable Gradle 'offline mode' and sync project I don't know what the hell any of this means -- I'm not a Java/Gradle/etc. person at all, just forced to use this pile of mess for Android -- so I cluelessly hit "Enable Gradle 'offline mode' and sync project" hoping it will resolve the error, and now: No cached version of org.ow2.asm:asm:5.1 available for offline mode. Disable Gradle 'offline mode' and sync project Created a new project and it compiled successfully. Cut-and-paste classes, here we come! On another note, creating a blank Android app results in nothing short of 87 files. Does it really have to be this complicated? Do we really have to use this gradle nonsense? (90%+ of the errors I get hen upgrading Android Studio say something about gradle). Most frameworks on other platforms are simple and elegant enough that it is possible to memorize the minimal "hello world" example and implement it with vim, and the IDE is just there for convenience, not out of necessity.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Yeah, when running on my gamer ring. Android Studio's performance made me loose interess on JetBrain products. Xeon class CPU, SSD and at least 16 GB RAM should be written on the box.
  - adl 9y ago
    That's mostly Gradle. Jetbrains IDEs are not exactly lean, but Android's use of Gradle is an exercise in patience, even on the command line.
    - vorg 9y ago
      I imagine Android Studio will switch to Bazel sometime in the near future. Every other non-Android Java shop seems to be rewriting their Gradle build files as Bazel configs nowadays. Gradle and Apache Groovy just don't scale.
on_and_off 9y ago
I was going to say that this is not a very big update but it brings https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/whatsnew/#v2017-3 https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/whatsnew/#v2017-3 and with it, type hints. This should be very useful in kotlin with rx. map calls are often hard to follow without explicitly writing types. This sounds like the best of both worlds.
Abishek_Muthian 9y ago
I hope the memory enhancements show considerable improvements. I've seen people with >32 GB memory complaining that AS eating enough RAM to affect productivity. Tip: If you have dual GPU system try launching AS, android emulator, Idea, WS, Pycharm, with the discrete GPU i.e (Linux/ATI in my case). 'DRI_PRIME=1 ../studio.sh' bash -c "LD_PRELOAD='/usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6' DRI_PRIME=1 ../android-sdk/emulator/emulator -avd Nexus_5X_API_27 -gpu host" I have seen considerable improvements in productivity for the same codebase with 3rd gen corei5 with ATI 7400M series GPU vs 7th gen corei5 with intel integrated gpu both having same memory. The OS setup is same. Obviously, java by itself isn't using the VRAM; I assume the visual rendering of IDE's & emulators use it and leaves enough RAM for the AS to gulp.
- tstieff 9y ago
  I've found that giving IntelliJ (or Android Studio) too much memory can actually backfire. The Java process ends up using all the memory you give it, but this also results in long GC pauses past a certain point. If you're curious, turn on the memory inidicator in the app with Settings -> Appearance -> Appearance -> Show memory indicator. I've found 2gb - 4gb to be the sweet spot depending on project size.
clumsysmurf 9y ago
Android Studio has such a fat ass. Every release it, and gradle, want more memory to do the same thing. I'm hoping that the tools devs improve or review the resource usage of the gradle plugin, etc. VS Code and the flutter tooling are svelte in comparison.
- smichel17 9y ago
  Seriously. I've gone back to vim completely (from my previous mix of Studio and vim). Browser tabs and gradle, alone, max out my laptop's 8gb ram. If I were to throw Studio into the mix, I'd have to close Firefox!
- mdellavo 9y ago
  Yeah I agree that has been the case but lowering memory usage has been a target of recent for Android Studio - See https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/index.html#3-1-0 https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/index.html#3-1... It's even using less memory than chrome lately.
  - hazza1 9y ago
    Using less memory than chrome is the very definition of faint praise.
- realharo 9y ago
  To be honest, everything about Android seems like a bit of a mess to me - the APIs, the tools, plus all the things from the user's perspective.
  - chimprich 9y ago
    The official documentation is worse - everything seems to be a mess of contradictions and constantly changing ways of doing things, with the documentation never catching up.
  - V-2 9y ago
    Yes it's a dirty world overall, but Android Studio - all its issues notwithstanding - is a great improvement over Eclipse regardless, and an awesome IDE. At least in terms of software design as such.
satysin 9y ago
I am surprised Google have not acquired JetBrains by now. Android Studio being based on their IntelliJ platform and Kotlin getting first class support in Android is investing a hell of a lot in a relatively small foreign company. Kinda strange as Google have acquired larger companies for less (less reliance not value).
- realharo 9y ago
  I really hope that doesn't happen.
- dep_b 9y ago
  If I trust any company with JetBrains it would be Microsoft. But they already have top notch products...I'm using PyCharm and Visual Studio Code side by side now and it's like VSC has like 10% of the menu options yet does everything I want it to do. Something like macOS versus Windows in terms of simplicity vs features.
- CodeWriter23 9y ago
  Google seems to often kill the great products they acquire.
- fwgwgwgch 9y ago
  Yes yes I'm breaking the HN guidelines but why has this been downvoted? All I see is a logical opinion.
cseelus 9y ago
Has anyone here worked with 3.1 as well as Xcode and can say something about the simulator experience of Android Studio?
- CodeWriter23 9y ago
  I’m an iPhone and Mac user. Can’t say I gave the Android emulator a good chance for me to like it. But just a couple of tries had me reaching for the Samsung J30 I picked up for on-device debugging. The emulator was pretty slow is why. Sounds like they worked on that for 3.1 though.

Android Studio, and in turn, Jetbrain's IDE are an absolute godsend for productivity. Quick actions, macros, shortcut egornomics, etc. are top notch and make me a happy developer. I would even dare to say, it's a better IDE than Visual Studio. runs for cover

bmpafa 9y ago
I'm a JavaScript / typescript guy, so for me these past few years VS code has been leaps and bounds ahead of WebStorm w/ extensions,etc. But lately I've been using Datagrip for SQL stuff,and geez, did Jetbrain crush the competition w/ this product. ...once I switched the shortcuts to match VS Code's, that is
- adl 9y ago
  Could you elaborate? VS Code is faster/leaner than WebStorm, that's for sure, but are there any specific workflows that you feel VSCode is better than WS?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - bmpafa 9y ago
    I found WebStorm a bit overwhelming when I first tried it (I was fairly new at the time), which made any workflow a little difficult for me out of the gate. That, and I remember Staples of the JS ecosystem (eg ESLint) being somewhat difficult to set up. Maybe they were simple if one knew the Jetbrain workflows, but for me, esp. compared to VS Code, it seemed a huge undertaking just to get ESLint to work. Actually, here's an SO question I posted awhile back about ESLint in WebStorm (well, intelliJ). This was shortly before I made the switch to Code. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34700062/intellij-plugin-airbnb-eslint-w-react https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34700062/intellij-plugin...
    - akx 9y ago
      These days PyCharm (and as such, probably WebStorm too) just auto-configures itself to ESlint files if it detects it's installed.
- doubleocherry 9y ago
  +1 for Datagrip, use it everyday
- dotancohen 9y ago
  > But lately I've been using Datagrip for SQL stuff,and geez, did Jetbrain crush the competition w/ this product. For me, "the competition" is the MySQL CLI. Is there and advantage to Datagrip assuming that one is reasonably proficient in SQL (at least the MySQL dialect)? Serious question. After running \# I've got table and field completion, and all the readline (pseudo-emacs) shortcuts work.
jenscow 9y ago
I'm was a long time Visual studio user (when it was called Visual C++), and Android Studio preview was my "gateway drug" into the Jetbrains IDEs. If anyone uses Resharper, I highly recommend trying Rider.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dheera 9y ago
Almost every release of Android Studio has succeeded in breaking every single Android app I wrote. I have always had to cut and paste every class, resource, layout, one by one into a new project in order to get it to compile. I always fear pressing the "update" button.
- barbs 9y ago
  What kind of ridiculous project structure do you have? I have never in my ~5 or so years of using Android Studio have had to do something as drastic as that. I have occasionally have had issues with updating, but this has required a tweak in the gradle file and an update of build tools, at most.
  - V-2 9y ago
    My experience (full-time Android dev) falls somewhat in the middle. This sort of compatibility breaking was fairly common back in the AS 1.X/early 2.X days. As of now, it's really rare, and usually resolves automatically.
  - sankalp_sans 9y ago
    > What kind of ridiculous project structure do you have? Obviously one that was supported in every preceding version of Android Studio. When making consumer-facing tools, it is the job of the tool maker to make sure that it doesn't break. If something works in a version, and breaks in another, guess who is to be blamed? (hint: not the user)
  - dheera 9y ago
    Let's see, I just upgraded to Android Studio 3.1, opened one of my previous ridiculously simple apps, and voila: Could not find com.android.tools.build:gradle:3.0.1. Searched in the following locations: https://jcenter.bintray.com/com/android/tools/build/gradle/3.0.1/gradle-3.0.1.pom https://jcenter.bintray.com/com/android/tools/build/gradle/3.0.1/gradle-3.0.1.jar Required by: project : Add Google Maven repository and sync project Open File Okay, I hit the "Add Google Maven repository and sync project", and now we have: Could not GET 'https://jcenter.bintray.com/org/ow2/asm/asm/5.1/asm-5.1.pom'. Received status code 502 from server: Bad Gateway Enable Gradle 'offline mode' and sync project I don't know what the hell any of this means -- I'm not a Java/Gradle/etc. person at all, just forced to use this pile of mess for Android -- so I cluelessly hit "Enable Gradle 'offline mode' and sync project" hoping it will resolve the error, and now: No cached version of org.ow2.asm:asm:5.1 available for offline mode. Disable Gradle 'offline mode' and sync project Created a new project and it compiled successfully. Cut-and-paste classes, here we come! On another note, creating a blank Android app results in nothing short of 87 files. Does it really have to be this complicated? Do we really have to use this gradle nonsense? (90%+ of the errors I get hen upgrading Android Studio say something about gradle). Most frameworks on other platforms are simple and elegant enough that it is possible to memorize the minimal "hello world" example and implement it with vim, and the IDE is just there for convenience, not out of necessity.
pjmlp 9y ago
Yeah, when running on my gamer ring. Android Studio's performance made me loose interess on JetBrain products. Xeon class CPU, SSD and at least 16 GB RAM should be written on the box.
- adl 9y ago
  That's mostly Gradle. Jetbrains IDEs are not exactly lean, but Android's use of Gradle is an exercise in patience, even on the command line.
  - vorg 9y ago
    I imagine Android Studio will switch to Bazel sometime in the near future. Every other non-Android Java shop seems to be rewriting their Gradle build files as Bazel configs nowadays. Gradle and Apache Groovy just don't scale.

on_and_off 9y ago

I was going to say that this is not a very big update but it brings https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/whatsnew/#v2017-3 https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/whatsnew/#v2017-3 and with it, type hints. This should be very useful in kotlin with rx. map calls are often hard to follow without explicitly writing types. This sounds like the best of both worlds.

Abishek_Muthian 9y ago

I hope the memory enhancements show considerable improvements. I've seen people with >32 GB memory complaining that AS eating enough RAM to affect productivity. Tip: If you have dual GPU system try launching AS, android emulator, Idea, WS, Pycharm, with the discrete GPU i.e (Linux/ATI in my case). 'DRI_PRIME=1 ../studio.sh' bash -c "LD_PRELOAD='/usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6' DRI_PRIME=1 ../android-sdk/emulator/emulator -avd Nexus_5X_API_27 -gpu host" I have seen considerable improvements in productivity for the same codebase with 3rd gen corei5 with ATI 7400M series GPU vs 7th gen corei5 with intel integrated gpu both having same memory. The OS setup is same. Obviously, java by itself isn't using the VRAM; I assume the visual rendering of IDE's & emulators use it and leaves enough RAM for the AS to gulp.

tstieff 9y ago
I've found that giving IntelliJ (or Android Studio) too much memory can actually backfire. The Java process ends up using all the memory you give it, but this also results in long GC pauses past a certain point. If you're curious, turn on the memory inidicator in the app with Settings -> Appearance -> Appearance -> Show memory indicator. I've found 2gb - 4gb to be the sweet spot depending on project size.

clumsysmurf 9y ago

Android Studio has such a fat ass. Every release it, and gradle, want more memory to do the same thing. I'm hoping that the tools devs improve or review the resource usage of the gradle plugin, etc. VS Code and the flutter tooling are svelte in comparison.

smichel17 9y ago
Seriously. I've gone back to vim completely (from my previous mix of Studio and vim). Browser tabs and gradle, alone, max out my laptop's 8gb ram. If I were to throw Studio into the mix, I'd have to close Firefox!
mdellavo 9y ago
Yeah I agree that has been the case but lowering memory usage has been a target of recent for Android Studio - See https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/index.html#3-1-0 https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/index.html#3-1... It's even using less memory than chrome lately.
- hazza1 9y ago
  Using less memory than chrome is the very definition of faint praise.
realharo 9y ago
To be honest, everything about Android seems like a bit of a mess to me - the APIs, the tools, plus all the things from the user's perspective.
- chimprich 9y ago
  The official documentation is worse - everything seems to be a mess of contradictions and constantly changing ways of doing things, with the documentation never catching up.
- V-2 9y ago
  Yes it's a dirty world overall, but Android Studio - all its issues notwithstanding - is a great improvement over Eclipse regardless, and an awesome IDE. At least in terms of software design as such.

satysin 9y ago

I am surprised Google have not acquired JetBrains by now. Android Studio being based on their IntelliJ platform and Kotlin getting first class support in Android is investing a hell of a lot in a relatively small foreign company. Kinda strange as Google have acquired larger companies for less (less reliance not value).

realharo 9y ago
I really hope that doesn't happen.
dep_b 9y ago
If I trust any company with JetBrains it would be Microsoft. But they already have top notch products...I'm using PyCharm and Visual Studio Code side by side now and it's like VSC has like 10% of the menu options yet does everything I want it to do. Something like macOS versus Windows in terms of simplicity vs features.
CodeWriter23 9y ago
Google seems to often kill the great products they acquire.
fwgwgwgch 9y ago
Yes yes I'm breaking the HN guidelines but why has this been downvoted? All I see is a logical opinion.

cseelus 9y ago

Has anyone here worked with 3.1 as well as Xcode and can say something about the simulator experience of Android Studio?

CodeWriter23 9y ago
I’m an iPhone and Mac user. Can’t say I gave the Android emulator a good chance for me to like it. But just a couple of tries had me reaching for the Samsung J30 I picked up for on-device debugging. The emulator was pretty slow is why. Sounds like they worked on that for 3.1 though.