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That you don't have to touch Android Studio/Intellij is already a huge improvement. Awesome job.

by wiseowise 10mo ago

shelled 10mo ago
And Gradle? Does skip the Gradle and that nightmare of a dependency management and handling?
- mihael 10mo ago
  Yes, exactly. SwifDroid automatically wires all the necessary Gradle dependencies, so you don’t have to manage them manually.
  - nicoburns 10mo ago
    Does it still ultimately call into gradle to perform the build?
    - mihael 10mo ago
      Yes, since we need Gradle dependencies in order to build rich UI with AndroidX or Material Design. But if you're interested in a minimal approach without Gradle, check out the example by @purpln here: https://github.com/purpln/android-example https://github.com/purpln/android-example
- mavamaarten 10mo ago
  I'm totally biased towards Android development using Gradle and kotlin. Gradle can be a pain, but if I look at what our neighbors at the iOS team experience (constantly having to manually merge project files, not being able to simply import some libraries, ...) it's hardly a nightmare. Specifically adding dependencies is super easy? Just specify which repo they're in (mavenCentral or Google or whatever) and add dependencies under "dependencies". When running or syncing, Gradle does the rest.
crowbahr 10mo ago
Touching xcode to avoid touching Android is like touching concentrated hydrochloric acid to avoid breathing a fart
- cosmic_cheese 10mo ago
  I think IDE preference leans further towards subjective than many believe. I find that IntelliJ IDEs are fine, but not nearly as amazing as they're often hyped up to be, and similarly while Xcode has problems it's not nearly as bad as is often claimed. My experience is somewhat colored by Android Studio and JVM ecosystem stuff like gradle and proguard though, which have been more cumulative pain for me than anything Apple-side in a long time (Cocoapods was pretty gnarly but SwiftPM has fixed that).
  - bigyabai 10mo ago
    There's definitely room for subjectivity, but my hard drive space is finite. And XCode takes up more room than all of my Jetbrains software combined.
    - ezfe 10mo ago
      Xcode download is only a couple GBs
      - bhawker 10mo ago
        12-20 GB, and only that if you don't want to run software on any iOS simulator.
        jshier 10mo ago
        Xcode 26.2 is a 2.1GB download, which expands to 8.63GB on disk, which includes the macOS SDK. The iOS SDK and simulators are another 8.38GB. Luckily Xcode versions can share iOS SDKs now, so you only need to install them once. Really the biggest disk eater is Xcode's default behavior of creating a huge set of simulators for every platform.

That you don't have to touch Android Studio/Intellij is already a huge improvement. Awesome job.

shelled 10mo ago

And Gradle? Does skip the Gradle and that nightmare of a dependency management and handling?

mihael 10mo ago
Yes, exactly. SwifDroid automatically wires all the necessary Gradle dependencies, so you don’t have to manage them manually.
- nicoburns 10mo ago
  Does it still ultimately call into gradle to perform the build?
  - mihael 10mo ago
    Yes, since we need Gradle dependencies in order to build rich UI with AndroidX or Material Design. But if you're interested in a minimal approach without Gradle, check out the example by @purpln here: https://github.com/purpln/android-example https://github.com/purpln/android-example
mavamaarten 10mo ago
I'm totally biased towards Android development using Gradle and kotlin. Gradle can be a pain, but if I look at what our neighbors at the iOS team experience (constantly having to manually merge project files, not being able to simply import some libraries, ...) it's hardly a nightmare. Specifically adding dependencies is super easy? Just specify which repo they're in (mavenCentral or Google or whatever) and add dependencies under "dependencies". When running or syncing, Gradle does the rest.

crowbahr 10mo ago

Touching xcode to avoid touching Android is like touching concentrated hydrochloric acid to avoid breathing a fart

cosmic_cheese 10mo ago
I think IDE preference leans further towards subjective than many believe. I find that IntelliJ IDEs are fine, but not nearly as amazing as they're often hyped up to be, and similarly while Xcode has problems it's not nearly as bad as is often claimed. My experience is somewhat colored by Android Studio and JVM ecosystem stuff like gradle and proguard though, which have been more cumulative pain for me than anything Apple-side in a long time (Cocoapods was pretty gnarly but SwiftPM has fixed that).
- bigyabai 10mo ago
  There's definitely room for subjectivity, but my hard drive space is finite. And XCode takes up more room than all of my Jetbrains software combined.
  - ezfe 10mo ago
    Xcode download is only a couple GBs
    - bhawker 10mo ago
      12-20 GB, and only that if you don't want to run software on any iOS simulator.
      - jshier 10mo ago
        Xcode 26.2 is a 2.1GB download, which expands to 8.63GB on disk, which includes the macOS SDK. The iOS SDK and simulators are another 8.38GB. Luckily Xcode versions can share iOS SDKs now, so you only need to install them once. Really the biggest disk eater is Xcode's default behavior of creating a huge set of simulators for every platform.