"if you don't want to use Java or you want to do layouts in text (I ended up writing my own DSL in Python to generate layout XML, but man it was a PITA)" You m

"if you don't want to use Java or you want to do layouts in text (I ended up writing my own DSL in Python to generate layout XML, but man it was a PITA)" You made it more difficult than it really is. It really depends upon what you want to do. If you want to make say a business app that connects to a web service and pulls some values and lets you set something or other, it's absurdly easy. The text layout shizzle even lets you take advantage of every form factor, different DPIs, etc, with automatic resource utilization based upon the device. Of course as you try to do anything more complex the nature of the beast is that the solution gets more complex.