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From personal experience and from hearing 1st person stories of startups who went Android second, it takes at least 2x to even 3x the amount of time to build an

From personal experience and from hearing 1st person stories of startups who went Android second, it takes at least 2x to even 3x the amount of time to build an Android app. This is why when a very talented Android engineer like Sarah Haider (Twitter's Android lead) goes from Twitter to Secret, it is a big deal. There are many strong, capable iOS technical leads out there and probably a fraction thereof in Droidlandia (using Pareto's famous rule, probably 4 - 5 good iOS technical leads for every 1 good Android technical lead). To make an app on Android look good, the responsibility lies much more on the developer than the designer. The designer on iOS can easily use IB. Not so much Android Studio or Eclipse. At the highest levels (slightly below Jake Wharton), talented Android developers who care about the user experience and can deliver compelling, beautiful apps can name their own price.

tomasien 13y ago
Eclipse is also HORRIBLE. Horrible, horrible horrible. Objective-C isn't exactly easy to understand, but Xcode is. I could functionally make things work in Xcode in 2 days having no experience with C or Objective C, I've probably spent 6 weeks in Eclipse in my life and I still couldn't really tell you how to do things. I have to re-learn it every time I want to do something, especially with the UI.
- jaydz 13y ago
  Give Android Studio a shot. Makes laying out the UI in XML a breeze with its excellent intellisense.
  - tomasien 13y ago
    I've heard that, and that's fine - I appreciate the suggestion and will probably use it, but if that's actually the best then people will take Android dev more seriously when the best is the standard IDE. Right now Eclipse is the default and it blows.
    - eropple 13y ago
      Eclipse is the default for most Java development, but I know fairly few serious Java developers who use it. Some do, I'm not saying they don't exist, but IntelliJ--of which Android Studio is a fork--is generally the go-to tool amongst the experienced, skilled Java folks I know. Double for Scala. (I used nothing but IDEA for Android work at my last job, for about eighteen months - Eclipse is certainly not required and doesn't really make it easier.)
      - fallinghawks 13y ago
        Second this. Not to say I'm an experienced Java developer, but after trying both, I'm sticking with IntelliJ, which was introduced to me by a Google SSE who definitely favored it over Eclipse.
      - andrewflnr 13y ago
        I was wondering how IDEA compared to Eclipse for android dev, in large part because I'm interested in porting my app to Kotlin, if it's not too huge a jump. It's good to hear that it works well, despite not being the "official" default.
        eropple 13y ago
        Android Studio is completely replicated within IDEA itself, so there's that too. We used a Maven build that worked really well within IDEA--it correctly wired up the Android facet and everything. I don't know anything about Kotlin on Android, though.
        CaRDiaK 13y ago
        Although I cannot compare to Eclipse. I'm a .NET Dev with an interest in Android. In fact I'm falling out with MS and sticking to that for a day job, but want to do Java / Android in my spare time. I've just completed the Courera programming Android course and I did the whole thing in IDEA community edition. I had no problems what so ever getting answers to any questions. I was relatively comfortable and productive within about 20 hours. I had no previous Java experience (although I'm a clean C# coder for over 6 years) I was impressed with the tools you get out the box. I've paid hundred (close to thousands) for similar tools in .NET.
  - arunc 13y ago
    It surely does. But why should I switch my build system? I'm a happy maven user. After all, only after AS came into picture I hear about the gradle non-sense. Gradle doesn't even use the proxy settings configured in AS (at least on Linux).
- sigsergv 13y ago
  I can say the same for XCode — it's insanely horrible and completely unusable.
  - tomasien 13y ago
    I suppose to each their own, but if anything except for the provisioning/plist stuff in Xcode is complicated to you, you must be used to something else because in and of itself xCode is phenomenal.
    - pugz 13y ago
      xCode (sic) is far from phenomenal. I have been writing iOS apps since 2008 and Mac apps longer than that and Xcode has made significant progress, but is still mediocre. It's very telling that Jetbrains managed to pull AppCode out of nowhere and blitz Xcode. I had never before used an IntelliJ-based IDE, but within a week or two my productive increased severalfold. It really puts Apple's efforts to shame.
      - eropple 13y ago
        I'm a big IntelliJ fan and I can't roll with AppCode. I admire the work, but XCode feels a lot better for native code development. (I do work in C++ and only use Objective-C for tooling via Obj-C++, though.)
        cageface 13y ago
        AppCode's C++ isn't quite there yet, I agree. Lately I'm also mostly using XCode because a huge chunk of my codebase is modern C++. But for pure Obj-C apps I'll take AppCode every day. There are so many little usability and productivity wins over Xcode.
  - aeberbach 13y ago
    Congratulations on the most ridiculous comment on HN today. How many apps on the app store was that now, 1,000,000+ according to the admittedly non-authoritative Wikipedia. And all of them created with hex editors, you would have us believe. Not the completely unusable Xcode.
- Ologn 13y ago
  Eclipse (or Android Studio) is good for when you are getting your feet wet with Android. If you don't like using it there are alternatives. I usually use Emacs or vi. The only thing I miss when not using Eclipse with the ADT plugin is after typing say "LinearLayout ll;" with Eclipse I can type Control-Shift-O and the LinearLayout class is automatically imported in the code. I miss this, but I kind of have this in Emacs with JDE - a Control-C-V-Z has similar behavior. I could probably do some more tool work on Emacs and make it even more automatic. I do everything with emacs, vi, ant, astyle, adb, and the Android commands "android" and "monitor". Some people do Android in IntelliJ, some in Netbeans. Some use Sublime Text. If you think Eclipse with ADT is bad for Android development now, you should have seen Eclipse/ADT at the end of 2009. Just getting the ADT plugin to work with Eclipse was a nightmare. Having seen the improvement since then, I guess it all seems less bad to me. Although I don't use Eclipse when I do Android programming, generally.
  - rmrfrmrf 13y ago
    I'm pretty sure the idea is to get more GUI-based, not less. Telling a designer to use vi instead of Eclipse for UI is pretty hilarious.
    - burstmode 13y ago
      Telling anybody to use vi at all is pretty hilarious.
      - Intermernet 13y ago
        I'm doing CoreOS based development at the moment and it only comes with vi. I've come across many other minimal linux environments where vi is the only option. It's worth learning, even if you only learn the basics.
  - berrypicker 13y ago
    Perhaps you're already aware of Eclim, if not, check it out. Really useful for doing Android/Java in Vim.
- balladeer 13y ago
  My honest response: it's not the IDEs fault. By the way I had felt the same with XCode and I don't think I can blame XCode for this. I code in MacVim. For anything, not just Android and I didn't like either Eclipse or XCode, XCode even lesser as mentioned above.
Zigurd 13y ago
> To make an app on Android look good, the responsibility lies much more on the developer than the designer. I would add that the designer has to understand Fragment, understand that density, orientation, screen size and text size are different dimensions of screen geometry, and how to avoid a combinatorial explosion of layouts, or, conversely, layouts that only work at default font sizes on medium denisty screens. The coder has to get it right, too.
- mortenjorck 13y ago
  Absolutely. In a lot of ways, Android UI design is like designing for the web, in that you're designing rules for layout more than you're designing specific layouts. Although I'd argue that that's really what designers should be doing anyway, thinking procedurally and in terms of systems rather than fixed, one-off designs.
hanspeide 13y ago
"From personal experience and from hearing 1st person stories of startups who went Android second, it takes at least 2x to even 3x the amount of time to build an Android app." This differs from my experience. I've work on several large app projects (> 200 000 downloads), and the Android versions have been ready before or at the same time as their iOS counterparts. Also, the good apps are not made using IB. Fine for prototyping, sure, but not suitable for real world use. Feel free to prove me wrong, and name IB success stories. Smells like good old FUD spreading to me.
- tomwilson 13y ago
  Saying good apps are not made using IB, and that its not suitable for real use, sounds like FUD to me too :) Sure you need to leave IB sometimes (or a lot of the time - depending on the app), but if you are coding every little view by hand... well you have more time on your hands (and budget?) than I do :P

tomasien 13y ago

Eclipse is also HORRIBLE. Horrible, horrible horrible. Objective-C isn't exactly easy to understand, but Xcode is. I could functionally make things work in Xcode in 2 days having no experience with C or Objective C, I've probably spent 6 weeks in Eclipse in my life and I still couldn't really tell you how to do things. I have to re-learn it every time I want to do something, especially with the UI.

jaydz 13y ago
Give Android Studio a shot. Makes laying out the UI in XML a breeze with its excellent intellisense.
- tomasien 13y ago
  I've heard that, and that's fine - I appreciate the suggestion and will probably use it, but if that's actually the best then people will take Android dev more seriously when the best is the standard IDE. Right now Eclipse is the default and it blows.
  - eropple 13y ago
    Eclipse is the default for most Java development, but I know fairly few serious Java developers who use it. Some do, I'm not saying they don't exist, but IntelliJ--of which Android Studio is a fork--is generally the go-to tool amongst the experienced, skilled Java folks I know. Double for Scala. (I used nothing but IDEA for Android work at my last job, for about eighteen months - Eclipse is certainly not required and doesn't really make it easier.)
    - fallinghawks 13y ago
      Second this. Not to say I'm an experienced Java developer, but after trying both, I'm sticking with IntelliJ, which was introduced to me by a Google SSE who definitely favored it over Eclipse.
    - andrewflnr 13y ago
      I was wondering how IDEA compared to Eclipse for android dev, in large part because I'm interested in porting my app to Kotlin, if it's not too huge a jump. It's good to hear that it works well, despite not being the "official" default.
      - eropple 13y ago
        Android Studio is completely replicated within IDEA itself, so there's that too. We used a Maven build that worked really well within IDEA--it correctly wired up the Android facet and everything. I don't know anything about Kotlin on Android, though.
      - CaRDiaK 13y ago
        Although I cannot compare to Eclipse. I'm a .NET Dev with an interest in Android. In fact I'm falling out with MS and sticking to that for a day job, but want to do Java / Android in my spare time. I've just completed the Courera programming Android course and I did the whole thing in IDEA community edition. I had no problems what so ever getting answers to any questions. I was relatively comfortable and productive within about 20 hours. I had no previous Java experience (although I'm a clean C# coder for over 6 years) I was impressed with the tools you get out the box. I've paid hundred (close to thousands) for similar tools in .NET.
- arunc 13y ago
  It surely does. But why should I switch my build system? I'm a happy maven user. After all, only after AS came into picture I hear about the gradle non-sense. Gradle doesn't even use the proxy settings configured in AS (at least on Linux).
sigsergv 13y ago
I can say the same for XCode — it's insanely horrible and completely unusable.
- tomasien 13y ago
  I suppose to each their own, but if anything except for the provisioning/plist stuff in Xcode is complicated to you, you must be used to something else because in and of itself xCode is phenomenal.
  - pugz 13y ago
    xCode (sic) is far from phenomenal. I have been writing iOS apps since 2008 and Mac apps longer than that and Xcode has made significant progress, but is still mediocre. It's very telling that Jetbrains managed to pull AppCode out of nowhere and blitz Xcode. I had never before used an IntelliJ-based IDE, but within a week or two my productive increased severalfold. It really puts Apple's efforts to shame.
    - eropple 13y ago
      I'm a big IntelliJ fan and I can't roll with AppCode. I admire the work, but XCode feels a lot better for native code development. (I do work in C++ and only use Objective-C for tooling via Obj-C++, though.)
      - cageface 13y ago
        AppCode's C++ isn't quite there yet, I agree. Lately I'm also mostly using XCode because a huge chunk of my codebase is modern C++. But for pure Obj-C apps I'll take AppCode every day. There are so many little usability and productivity wins over Xcode.
- aeberbach 13y ago
  Congratulations on the most ridiculous comment on HN today. How many apps on the app store was that now, 1,000,000+ according to the admittedly non-authoritative Wikipedia. And all of them created with hex editors, you would have us believe. Not the completely unusable Xcode.
Ologn 13y ago
Eclipse (or Android Studio) is good for when you are getting your feet wet with Android. If you don't like using it there are alternatives. I usually use Emacs or vi. The only thing I miss when not using Eclipse with the ADT plugin is after typing say "LinearLayout ll;" with Eclipse I can type Control-Shift-O and the LinearLayout class is automatically imported in the code. I miss this, but I kind of have this in Emacs with JDE - a Control-C-V-Z has similar behavior. I could probably do some more tool work on Emacs and make it even more automatic. I do everything with emacs, vi, ant, astyle, adb, and the Android commands "android" and "monitor". Some people do Android in IntelliJ, some in Netbeans. Some use Sublime Text. If you think Eclipse with ADT is bad for Android development now, you should have seen Eclipse/ADT at the end of 2009. Just getting the ADT plugin to work with Eclipse was a nightmare. Having seen the improvement since then, I guess it all seems less bad to me. Although I don't use Eclipse when I do Android programming, generally.
- rmrfrmrf 13y ago
  I'm pretty sure the idea is to get more GUI-based, not less. Telling a designer to use vi instead of Eclipse for UI is pretty hilarious.
  - burstmode 13y ago
    Telling anybody to use vi at all is pretty hilarious.
    - Intermernet 13y ago
      I'm doing CoreOS based development at the moment and it only comes with vi. I've come across many other minimal linux environments where vi is the only option. It's worth learning, even if you only learn the basics.
- berrypicker 13y ago
  Perhaps you're already aware of Eclim, if not, check it out. Really useful for doing Android/Java in Vim.
balladeer 13y ago
My honest response: it's not the IDEs fault. By the way I had felt the same with XCode and I don't think I can blame XCode for this. I code in MacVim. For anything, not just Android and I didn't like either Eclipse or XCode, XCode even lesser as mentioned above.

Zigurd 13y ago

> To make an app on Android look good, the responsibility lies much more on the developer than the designer. I would add that the designer has to understand Fragment, understand that density, orientation, screen size and text size are different dimensions of screen geometry, and how to avoid a combinatorial explosion of layouts, or, conversely, layouts that only work at default font sizes on medium denisty screens. The coder has to get it right, too.

mortenjorck 13y ago
Absolutely. In a lot of ways, Android UI design is like designing for the web, in that you're designing rules for layout more than you're designing specific layouts. Although I'd argue that that's really what designers should be doing anyway, thinking procedurally and in terms of systems rather than fixed, one-off designs.

hanspeide 13y ago

"From personal experience and from hearing 1st person stories of startups who went Android second, it takes at least 2x to even 3x the amount of time to build an Android app." This differs from my experience. I've work on several large app projects (> 200 000 downloads), and the Android versions have been ready before or at the same time as their iOS counterparts. Also, the good apps are not made using IB. Fine for prototyping, sure, but not suitable for real world use. Feel free to prove me wrong, and name IB success stories. Smells like good old FUD spreading to me.

tomwilson 13y ago
Saying good apps are not made using IB, and that its not suitable for real use, sounds like FUD to me too :) Sure you need to leave IB sometimes (or a lot of the time - depending on the app), but if you are coding every little view by hand... well you have more time on your hands (and budget?) than I do :P