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Open Android Studio once a week and it will each time ask you to install something new. I am not against progress and small, iterative updates. That's what agil

Open Android Studio once a week and it will each time ask you to install something new. I am not against progress and small, iterative updates. That's what agile promises us and that's how we get quick feedback from customers, especially when building an MVP. But Android and Android Studio should become mature products at some point in time. Given they are constantly changing Android APIs and requiring multiple layers of compatibility classes, Android Studio will continue to remain a powerful teenager in its puberty still for a long while.

kllrnohj 5y ago
Are you confusing AndroidX & gradle updates with Android or Android Studio updates? Android & Android Studio, the core platform, doesn't update very often at all. Gradle does update regularly, as does AndroidX, and a typical Android app will usually have half a dozen dependencies all on their own update schedule. Plus the build tools & emulator get regular updates. All in all there's probably a dozen different individual components. But none of this is the result of "immaturity" nor does it make any sense to create a big huge monolithic update schedule.
- la_fayette 5y ago
  Android studio has a couple of minor or patch updates per month (https://androidstudio.googleblog.com https://androidstudio.googleblog.com). Every now and then when you open the IDE you are asked to update. Every Android developer knows that, it is almost a meme.
  - nailer 5y ago
    Why doesn’t it update itself?
matchbok 5y ago
Ha, I wish. 10 years, and Android still doesn't have a good way to accomplish navigation, view models, state retention, or anything. 10 different support libraries, everything deprecated once a year, etc. The entire platform is a mess.
- cromwellian 5y ago
  Jetpack Compose subsumes many of those and in a very elegant, coherent way, much like Swift UI, but IMHO better because it's based on pure composable functions.
  - dmitrybrant 5y ago
    All well and good, but only if you're just starting to build your app literally today. If your app was built more than ~6 months before the current iteration of Jetpack/AndroidX/etc, you'll never finish catching up with converting your code to the latest new patterns that they introduce.
    - myko 5y ago
      We regularly update our apps when these libraries update, even for projects 5+ years old. You don't need to switch to the latest "architecture" all the time. It's trivial to add Compose to mature apps, you don't need to convert the entire app immediately.
      - dmitrybrant 5y ago
        Well sure, thankfully all these myriad ways of doing the same thing coexist without much issues, since they're all just wrappers around findViewById(). But I just wish they'd settle on a pattern that will endure for more than a single major version of the library.
      - crossroadsguy 5y ago
        That’s the problem. Once you’ve started adding Compose to your app and are finally midway through it there will this new shiny toy and the entire herd will be playing with it. Then what? Finish compose or leave it there and start with the new toy? While there’s always a fundamental way of doing it - you just need the damn view! But no! To avoid even writing exactly 3-4 lines of findViewById per class on an average someone decided it’s revolutionary to add Butter Knife to the project and so on.. Or maybe there’s some one who gets kicks from seeing so many annotations in the classes! Android ecosystem is really plagued by this fad culture imho. PS. Nothing could make me an iPhone user. But finally being an Android developer did that! Really that’s the reason.

kllrnohj 5y ago

Are you confusing AndroidX & gradle updates with Android or Android Studio updates? Android & Android Studio, the core platform, doesn't update very often at all. Gradle does update regularly, as does AndroidX, and a typical Android app will usually have half a dozen dependencies all on their own update schedule. Plus the build tools & emulator get regular updates. All in all there's probably a dozen different individual components. But none of this is the result of "immaturity" nor does it make any sense to create a big huge monolithic update schedule.

la_fayette 5y ago
Android studio has a couple of minor or patch updates per month (https://androidstudio.googleblog.com https://androidstudio.googleblog.com). Every now and then when you open the IDE you are asked to update. Every Android developer knows that, it is almost a meme.
- nailer 5y ago
  Why doesn’t it update itself?

matchbok 5y ago

Ha, I wish. 10 years, and Android still doesn't have a good way to accomplish navigation, view models, state retention, or anything. 10 different support libraries, everything deprecated once a year, etc. The entire platform is a mess.

cromwellian 5y ago
Jetpack Compose subsumes many of those and in a very elegant, coherent way, much like Swift UI, but IMHO better because it's based on pure composable functions.
- dmitrybrant 5y ago
  All well and good, but only if you're just starting to build your app literally today. If your app was built more than ~6 months before the current iteration of Jetpack/AndroidX/etc, you'll never finish catching up with converting your code to the latest new patterns that they introduce.
  - myko 5y ago
    We regularly update our apps when these libraries update, even for projects 5+ years old. You don't need to switch to the latest "architecture" all the time. It's trivial to add Compose to mature apps, you don't need to convert the entire app immediately.
    - dmitrybrant 5y ago
      Well sure, thankfully all these myriad ways of doing the same thing coexist without much issues, since they're all just wrappers around findViewById(). But I just wish they'd settle on a pattern that will endure for more than a single major version of the library.
    - crossroadsguy 5y ago
      That’s the problem. Once you’ve started adding Compose to your app and are finally midway through it there will this new shiny toy and the entire herd will be playing with it. Then what? Finish compose or leave it there and start with the new toy? While there’s always a fundamental way of doing it - you just need the damn view! But no! To avoid even writing exactly 3-4 lines of findViewById per class on an average someone decided it’s revolutionary to add Butter Knife to the project and so on.. Or maybe there’s some one who gets kicks from seeing so many annotations in the classes! Android ecosystem is really plagued by this fad culture imho. PS. Nothing could make me an iPhone user. But finally being an Android developer did that! Really that’s the reason.