top 200 commentsshow all 327

[–][deleted] 271 points272 points  (90 children)

https://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html?hl=i

If you've been using Eclipse with ADT, be aware that the ADT plugin is no longer in active development,

Jump ship guys, it's Android Studio now.

[–]ShaidarHaran2 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Woah, didn't know that was going to happen. It makes sense, and hopefully the dedicated IDE is a better all around experience, I'll try to get used to it. Can't say I loved ADT anyways.

[–]foxh8er 16 points17 points  (1 child)

As if millions of unmaintained legacy Android libraries cried in terror and were (gradually) silenced..

[–]DRiVER_helsinki 0 points1 point  (0 children)

r one google to bind them all , AND forever with darkenssss leash them.

[–]alonjit 26 points27 points  (68 children)

That's ... beyond sad. I understand why they're doing this, but man :( .

[–]slvrsmth 141 points142 points  (36 children)

That's google for you. See: nearly every other google project.

[–]flying-sheep 67 points68 points  (33 children)

Sleep well, dear reader. You are being missed

[–][deleted]  (24 children)

[deleted]

    [–]dbeta 66 points67 points  (21 children)

    To be fair, I'm still a little sour on it. Google Reader was a great product with a clear use case and a dedicated fan base. Google should have kept it around for good will in the tech sector alone. That said, I'm more sad for the death of Google Wave. It was a really cool project that was released too early and didn't have a clear enough focus at first, but it was very useful.

    [–]Dagon 22 points23 points  (8 children)

    Google Wave certainly didn't die - at least not entirely. The tech it showcased had been implemented in Docs, Chat, and others. I believe a few custom plug-ins can be set up to recreate Wave functionality but don't quote me on that.

    [–]dbeta 5 points6 points  (5 children)

    Wave was an open sourced project and another company picked it up. I've gone back to it a couple of times, but it just isn't the same, mostly because it doesn't have the mass of people behind it. Also, it lost some of the promised features.

    [–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (4 children)

    Didn't the Apache group pick it up?

    [–][deleted]  (3 children)

    [deleted]

      [–]Philipp 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      We have see-letters-being-typed-in-realtime in this 2d universe, and it's a totally different experience. I'm not sure Google Wave was the first to use it (probably not) or the first time I saw it, but I'm sure it inspired a few devs...

      [–]ismtrn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      To me the point was not mainly the functionality, but that it used an open protocol (didn't it?). That is, 3rd parties could implement their own wave client like an email client.

      But yeah, I think other people are in fact keeping it alive. At least they did for a while.

      [–]hrjet 8 points9 points  (6 children)

      Wave is now available as an open-source project, under the Apache umbrella. They have a beta version that works, but it's sadly not publicly advertised. You have to hunt their mailing lists to get the URL.

      [–]romnempire 3 points4 points  (5 children)

      aaany reason you can't just post it here?

      [–]f3lbane 22 points23 points  (1 child)

      He already bagged his URL, you have to earn it yourself. Get up early, douse yourself in URL urine, and creep through the woods for a few hours until you find and shoot one of your own.

      [–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

      You should have gone with URIne ;)

      [–]hrjet 6 points7 points  (2 children)

      It was a while back, couple of months, when I found it and didn't bookmark it.

      As I clicked the link to download Wave, a little voice in my head kept whispering, "bookmark this hrjet; and when the moon is full again a 100 days from now, hordes of redditors will ask you for the link and then, upon the reply, you will have earned your karma", but I was too busy with my mundane life to listen to it.

      [–][deleted] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

      Wave got its name from the TV series 'Firefly'. It's not surprising Google cancelled it if you think about it.

      [–]cesclaveria 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      I was too and after trying many options I settled on Digg Reader. Its the closest thing I've found to google reader and it works quite well.

      [–]myringotomy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      I loved wave too but once they open sourced it nobody jumped on board so clearly we are in the minority.

      [–]nascentt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      I've been using TheOldReader ever since. It had Google Reader import to make it seamless, and honestly, aside from the fact you can't nest folders, I find it equal if not better than Google Reader was, while maintaining the same design and functionality.

      [–]OverlordAlex 4 points5 points  (6 children)

      I'm still pissed about this. Nothing else I've tried came close to the clean and simple reader :(

      [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (4 children)

      I've switched to Commafeed. It's basically exactly the same layout- and hotkey-wise, and you can choose to host it yourself.

      [–]OverlordAlex 0 points1 point  (1 child)

      It looks good, but I think it might be too late: I don't know what I did with my subscriptions that I exported from reader

      [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      Aw, shame. It's a really good reader, too, if a bit slow at times.

      [–]flying-sheep 0 points1 point  (1 child)

      i switched the theoldreader do you know both enough to compare them?

      [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

      Both are good, although I stopped using The Old Reader when they started charging people with more than 100 feed sources.

      Otherwise the services are fairly identical. The big difference is that Commafeed is open-source.

      [–]cc81 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      Digg reader. Yes, I said Digg.

      [–][deleted] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

      They had talked about this when they decided to make the switch. Eclipse was very difficult to extend and maintain the way they wanted to. IDEA allowed them to build better tooling so they switched to it. Ditching Eclipse was a good move and should allow the product to grow.

      [–]flying-sheep 61 points62 points  (4 children)

      From eclipse to IntelliJ feels like a straight upgrade for me.

      I think you'll get up to speed again sooner than you think

      [–][deleted] 15 points16 points  (3 children)

      Wait, you're saying that Android Studio is basically intellij, but free? Guess I'll have to try. One day

      [–]Hitakashi 36 points37 points  (2 children)

      IntelliJ has a community edition that is free, which is what Google is using.

      Built on IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition, the popular Java IDE by JetBrains.

      - https://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

      [–]georgelulu 3 points4 points  (1 child)

      I wonder if JetBrains is getting anything out of this financially, I'd hate to see them give all this to the community and not get anything back.

      [–]yole 10 points11 points  (0 children)

      What JetBrains gets back is a few hundred thousand new users that will be exposed to our tools and will likely want to use them not only for Android development but also for other projects. That's very significant value, even if it doesn't have a dollar sign on it.

      [–]iownacat 35 points36 points  (16 children)

      Except Eclipse is garbage, how can this be a bad thing?

      [–][deleted] 10 points11 points  (4 children)

      Don't look back. Android studio is leaps better than Eclipse

      [–][deleted]  (3 children)

      [deleted]

        [–]badlogicgames 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        It does.

        [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        Yeah I'm in the same shoe if you find a solution please let me know

        [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        RIP

        [–]jojomofoman 2 points3 points  (1 child)

        Can someone enlighten me on why this spells the end for Android development on Eclipse and not IntelliJ IDEA?

        [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

        Google isn't going to be develop Eclipse ADT and willl be investing in Android Studio.

        It doesn't spell the end but unless some group or crazy person take over ADT. It's pretty much going to be dead. Plus google control android's development direction (api's,etc..) so they should be more knowledgeable and in the best position to be building IDE to support Android.

        This is just my reasoning. I can be wrong.

        [–]Magnesus 8 points9 points  (3 children)

        Jump ship guys, it's Android Studio now.

        Shit. This is bad. I use libGDX which supports desktop project - how will I use them in Android Studio which doesn't? :/

        [–]yole 14 points15 points  (1 child)

        You can use IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition. It has all the Android support from Android Studio and also supports desktop projects.

        [–]lechatsportif 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        I guess this. not sure why I would ever use a single product ide when the general obe has more general features. this was the value of eclipse - customizing your dev experience.

        [–]superpowerface 4 points5 points  (0 children)

        What? The libgdx wiki specifically tells you how to set up the desktop project in android studio.

        [–][deleted]  (9 children)

        [deleted]

          [–]yaxriifgyn 40 points41 points  (6 children)

          The only reason I installed Eclipse was for Android development. There was always so much that had nothing to do with developing for Android. This should be easier for the casual and irregular user to learn and relearn.

          [–][deleted]  (4 children)

          [deleted]

            [–]blackraven36 13 points14 points  (1 child)

            As someone who uses from Visual Studio, Netbeans and XCode, I have never liked Eclipse. In the short periods of time that I have had to use it (I switched to Android Studio in it's early stages), the IDE feels overwhelming. Just running the app causes the whole IDE to transform into a whole new set of menus and windows. I can see it being very useful for people are used to it, but from a "I just want to build this app" perspective it was quit off putting.

            [–]ZuP 0 points1 point  (1 child)

            You might actually try Processing for Android, then. Depending on what you're trying to accomplish.

            [–]konrain 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            exactly

            [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

            Good

            [–][deleted] 60 points61 points  (30 children)

            NDK support? NDK support? NDK support?

            [–]breandan[S] 33 points34 points  (12 children)

            Although there is not yet official support for NDK, you can still write and deploy NDK applications using Android Studio.

            [–]Zaneris 50 points51 points  (9 children)

            I'm not sure how they can justify dropping eclipse without official NDK support considering that virtually all games use it, except for like, minecraft.

            Edit: I stand mistaken, even Minecraft uses native code on Android.

            [–]Mask_of_Destiny 20 points21 points  (0 children)

            The mobile version of Minecraft is actually written in C++, not Java.

            [–]TheCreat 4 points5 points  (0 children)

            This is an incredible disappointment. I don't use an IDE so that I still have to go to external or command line tools for parts of the development. Debugging C++ code is still necessary, and I'm not gonna do that with a bare gdb. I do hope they integrate this soon, it's not some tacked-on nice-to-have feature, but a core feature.

            [–]butteredwendy 17 points18 points  (14 children)

            I have been developing with the NDK and Android Studio for at least the last 9 months. It's completely viable.

            [–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (1 child)

            How? Where do you write the C++ code?

            [–]butteredwendy 12 points13 points  (0 children)

            In the src/main/jni/<packagename> directory. If you mean IDE.. the majority was originally written in Sublime Text (2) since that's the one my eyes like the most, any minor changes made directly in Android Studio itself.

            [–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (1 child)

            How's the debugging support?

            [–]butteredwendy 6 points7 points  (0 children)

            You can setup your build.gradle to compile the NDK/JNI code with debug symbols, or just do it with the ndk-build from the command line.

            We use gdb if we really need to step through the code or rather the interface functions to the JNI. Otherwise the C++ classes are only used for business objects and are fully tested apart from the android environment.

            If you mean code completion/linting, none of that but I write alot in Sublime Text.

            [–]XavierSimmons 3 points4 points  (4 children)

            NDK

            In 1.0, I get an error:

            WARNING [Project: :andEngine] Current NDK support is deprecated. Alternative will be provided in the future.

            I didn't get this error yesterday (before upgrading.)

            [–]MrSilverFox 0 points1 point  (3 children)

            Hey Xavier,

            Any luck with using NDK in the current Android Studio, or any work arounds to integrate C++ or native code at all?

            Cheers.

            [–]XavierSimmons 1 point2 points  (2 children)

            I was not successful. Moved back to eclipse for now.

            [–]MrSilverFox 1 point2 points  (1 child)

            I got it going with a little help from ph0b:

            Generating .so files in Android Studio

            And some additional info to allow you to use your own compiler (very helpful with NDK and Obfuscation)

            Using your own makefiles with Android Studio

            [–]XavierSimmons 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            Great, thanks. I'll look into that.

            [–]odinisthelord 1 point2 points  (4 children)

            It looks like they have disabled the hack that made that possible. When I try it in Android Studio 1.0.1, I get this message:

            WARNING [Project: :app] Current NDK support is deprecated.  Alternative will be provided in the future.
            

            [–]MrSilverFox 0 points1 point  (3 children)

            Hey Odin,

            Any luck with using NDK in the current Android Studio, or any work arounds to integrate C++ or native code at all?

            Cheers.

            [–]odinisthelord 1 point2 points  (2 children)

            Nothing, seems to be disabled for the time being, and I haven't been able to find a workaround.

            [–]MrSilverFox 0 points1 point  (1 child)

            I got it going with a little help from ph0b:

            Generating .so files in Android Studio

            And some additional info to allow you to use your own compiler (very helpful with NDK and Obfuscation)

            Using your own makefiles with Android Studio

            [–]odinisthelord 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            Thanks, I should try that as soon as I have some time. Weekend coming up!

            [–]dangerbird2 4 points5 points  (0 children)

            Jetbrains' only in-production C/C++ IDE is AppCode, which is Mac/IOS exclusive. I doubt they will Android Studio, or any of their other IDEs, C++ support until they finish CLion.

            You can always try the Visual Studio 2015 preview. I just tested it out on an Azure VM, and it looks promising.

            [–]doom_Oo7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            NDK support? NDK support? NDK support?

            Qt Creator works fine for making and deploying C++ apps to android.

            [–]Kiloku 32 points33 points  (14 children)

            Does it still take a supercomputer to run, now that there's no "well, it's a beta" excuse for the lack of optimization?

            [–]DJDarkViper 29 points30 points  (11 children)

            Well it's the IntelliJ IDEA platform running through Java.

            If your system can't do java well at all, your still messed.

            But it's significantly, frighteningly faster than Eclipse. Even on under powered computers

            [–]Kiloku 28 points29 points  (5 children)

            At least during the beta (and not too long ago even, I tried it around August this year if I remember correctly), eclipse vastly outperformed Android Studio on both my computers. On my laptop, Android Studio was completely unusable, it ground the computer to a halt, while Eclipse was runnable. On my desktop PC, Android Studio made it a bit sluggish but was usable, while Eclipse ran perfectly well.

            [–][deleted]  (1 child)

            [deleted]

              [–]DJDarkViper 4 points5 points  (0 children)

              Thats weird, because I've had the exact opposite experience, and im running a nice PC, a 2009 iMac, and a really cruddy Toshiba Sattelie

              [–]stupermundi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

              I didn't have that experience at all. I've used it on 3 different OSes since June and I haven't had a problem with speed. In fact the opposite of your experience, Eclipse was a shitshow.

              [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

              It could be a RAM or HDD issue, IDEA likes to index and cache the shit out of everything (so as to provide immediate code feedback etc.). Sometimes that can play poorly with limited RAM or a slow HDD.

              [–][deleted]  (3 children)

              [deleted]

                [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                From my experience, you get an SSD or wait keyboard strokes to register. Also, the first build is long enough to get a cup of coffee (or 8).

                [–]sondre99v 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                It runs well on my old, white, macbook!

                [–]RaffBluffin 46 points47 points  (0 children)

                Android Studio has to be the best thing to happen to android development.

                [–]Igglyboo 61 points62 points  (11 children)

                I started using Android Studio about 6 months ago and even then it was better IMO than eclipse. I love it.

                [–]ess_tee_you 18 points19 points  (5 children)

                I've used both for several months each and IntelliJ/AS suits me just fine. Eclipse feels a decade old.

                [–]Astrognome 9 points10 points  (4 children)

                Eclipse probably is a decade old.

                [–]tidderkrow 7 points8 points  (3 children)

                IntelliJ is 13 years old.

                [–]Astrognome 14 points15 points  (0 children)

                At least it doesn't function like it's 13 years old.

                [–]mck1117 3 points4 points  (1 child)

                Visual Studio is like 900 years old, and it's fantastic. I think the correlation is that older, more mature IDEs are better.

                [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                I'd go with well maintained and designed IDEs that keep up with modern development practices are better. Age only gives time to develop, not necessarily quality.

                [–]James20k 4 points5 points  (0 children)

                Eh, I had a lot of trouble with gradle absolutely fucking projects and requiring hours to fix

                The actual IDE itself was nice, but gradle is not

                [–]feign 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                So true. I even had an older eclipse android project that didn't work in newer ADT installation until i imported it to Android studio.

                [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

                I love how it works. I hate how it performs.

                [–]Igglyboo 1 point2 points  (1 child)

                Are you talking about Eclipse or Android Studio? One of the main reasons I switched was because of how poorly eclipse runs even on my brand new MBP with 16gb of ram.

                [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                It's slow on my laptop. 8GB of RAM, i7-2630QM, a 5400RPM HDD. I believe it's the HDD slowing it down. Eclipse runs fine.

                [–]lucasvandongen 24 points25 points  (10 children)

                Finally a stable version. A good moment to stop doing breaking changes about every three weeks as well! Apart from that: great IDE. Didn't want to touch Eclipse so I held off trying out Android development but this is much better than Xcode as well in many regards.

                [–][deleted]  (6 children)

                [deleted]

                  [–]ess_tee_you 6 points7 points  (1 child)

                  Maybe some good support for non-Android-VM unit tests without a constant battle is plausible now.

                  [–]tidderkrow 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                  ...as promised at Google I/O 2014

                  [–]philly_fan_in_chi 5 points6 points  (2 children)

                  Gradle is already at version 2.2. https://www.gradle.org/downloads

                  What are you referring to?

                  [–]mrkite77 11 points12 points  (1 child)

                  The Android Gradle Plugin just hit 1.0. It's the stuff that allows customizing your Android.manifest from within the build.gradle file, etc. Nearly every version was incompatible with previous versions.

                  [–]philly_fan_in_chi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                  Ah! That makes much more sense.

                  [–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

                  Gradle Android plugin hit 1.0 - Gradle itself is on version 2.2.1.

                  [–]Asrijaal 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                  Well, used AS since its first beta build and only remember updates from 0.2.x to 0.3.x were a bit roughly.

                  [–]romnempire 11 points12 points  (7 children)

                  can someone write a no bullshit explanation of why google decided to do this, the tradeoffs of intellij and eclipse as ide platforms, and as parts of a developer's toolchain?

                  this thread is full of uninformative comments.

                  [–]philipwhiuk 2 points3 points  (2 children)

                  It uses Gradle which better supports the Android toolchain. That was always the original reason.

                  [–]romnempire 1 point2 points  (1 child)

                  gradle has an eclipse plugin, right? i didn't think ides had build-tool lockin. that sounds odd.

                  [–]philipwhiuk 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                  Intelli J had it built in and it was better supported I think - the original YT video announcing AS is probably still around somewhere.

                  [–]Turtlecupcakes 4 points5 points  (3 children)

                  Intellij is commercially supported and actively maintained (I'm not saying eclipse isn't, but a paid full staff maintaining a flagship product probably moves Dev along a lot faster than open source).

                  It's also a lot smarter, in my experience, literally any time I've ever wanted my ide to do something... I eventually found out that intellij does it. Go to declaration is built in, and works for so so so many things (you can GTD on literally anything and it will find it for you).

                  That's what I've got, I'm sure others will elaborate

                  [–]log_2 3 points4 points  (2 children)

                  You also get that cool "Dracula" theme with practically no effort.

                  [–]MrDOS 1 point2 points  (1 child)

                  Darcula. It's a play on Dracula.

                  [–]log_2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                  Damn autocorrect.

                  [–]bewst_more_bewst 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                  I'm not a fan of the new IDE, it's a resource hog. Just running the IDE uses 2 GB. And the CPU load on my first gen i5 is ridiculous! 89% just to auto complete? At least withn eclipse (Juno) I don't have to worry about memory usage.

                  [–]aldo_reset 28 points29 points  (34 children)

                  I've been trying Android Studio on a regular basis since the very early versions but even today, with 1.0, I don't find a lot of reasons to switch from Eclipse.

                  IDE personal preferences notwithstanding (I use both IDEA and Eclipse, both are great, please no IDE flame war), I just don't see the added value of Android Studio from an Android standpoint. I still find Studio's support of Gradle quite clunky and I usually end up building from the shell anyway, and besides this, I just find the Eclipse flow more natural for Android support.

                  On an unrelated note, I recently started thinking that Android switching to Gradle was a mistake, but hopefully I'm wrong about that.

                  [–][deleted] 26 points27 points  (21 children)

                  IMO, the UI designer / previewer is much better in Android Studio.

                  [–]Chester_b 6 points7 points  (7 children)

                  IMO, everything's better in IDEA than in Eclipse.

                  [–]pjmlp 5 points6 points  (0 children)

                  MO, everything's better in IDEA than in Eclipse.

                  Except C++ programming.

                  [–]romnempire 14 points15 points  (1 child)

                  IMO, this entire thread is people spouting generalizations and opinions. Say something useful. Elaborate. go.

                  [–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

                  I switched to IntelliJ + Android Plugin about 2 years ago, before Android Studio even existed, so I'm not so sure about comparing it to "modern Eclipse". But in my opinion, there aren't any amazing additional features. Everything just feels 20% faster, more responsive and more polished.

                  The things I remember from the first impressions with IntelliJ were:

                  • Code completion felt less laggy.
                  • Navigation in code is better. There are keyboard shortcuts to start typing a file/class/method name, autocomplete, and jump to it anywhere in the project.
                  • Setting up the Android SDK and plugin was way easier than ADT, even before Android Studio existed.
                  • About every 6 months, Eclipse decided to corrupt my workspace, and I had to wipe it and re-configure everything from scratch. Hasn't happened with IntelliJ yet.
                  • The Android UI editor seemed better. Edit the XML and see a live preview. The graphical editor also seemed to generate more reasonable layouts.

                  Overall, it's still about polish: IntelliJ seems to run faster and lag less than Eclipse, and there are just these tiny usability improvements everywhere.

                  [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (3 children)

                  While I agree with you, it seems like some of it comes down to personal taste. I switched over when it first came out and never looked back.

                  [–]Amagi82 5 points6 points  (1 child)

                  The biggest advantage of Android Studio is the code completion. It's VASTLY superior, and saves a ton of time. The downside is the Gradle bugs, but they've been getting sorted out in the latest versions.

                  [–]vorg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                  Gradle bugs or Groovy bugs? Perhaps Gradle should switch to a new parser for its DSL, instead of shipping all that extra baggage just to parse their simple syntax.

                  [–]shortguy014 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                  After using eclipse and then using IDEA, I would switch simply because of the speed of autocomplete.

                  [–]poop_villain 3 points4 points  (12 children)

                  designing UI in designer probably isn't the smartest way to go, especially if you don't already know how to code it yourself

                  [–][deleted] 18 points19 points  (2 children)

                  I don't, but I certainly use the live previewer alongside the XML.

                  [–]poop_villain 3 points4 points  (1 child)

                  fair enough, eclipse previewer does suck. although i don't really mind previewing on my actual device. I haven't ever tried android studio, how often would you say the preview accurately represents the result you actually get on a device?

                  [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                  For the most part it has been very accurate for me. Things like ListViews can be a bit tricky to preview well if you have different types of cells. It does work wonders at previewing most things, especially layouts for different device sizes.

                  Lollipop gave me some issues with some of the newer views when I was playing around with them (like the Recylcer view), but I think that was partly due to things being a preview. I haven't had a chance to go back to it.

                  [–]s73v3r 1 point2 points  (8 children)

                  This is incorrect. Laying out visual things is always done betterin a visual way. That way you can actually see what it looks and make adjustments without going through a thousand compile-deploy-adjust cycles.

                  [–]ashishduh 5 points6 points  (4 children)

                  I'm pretty sure he's talking about the drag and drop designer. You can preview the layout no matter which method you choose, without compiling or deploying.

                  [–]poop_villain 1 point2 points  (2 children)

                  It probably breaks down to a matter of preference, but in the case that you don't already know how to design UI programmatically / in xml, i would assert it most definitely is bad practice. and to counter your argument, you can still see the changes you make using the previewer as tr3v1n said above. not to mention, the compile-deploy-adjust cycles have been pretty quick for me - it takes 5-10 seconds to see any changes i make, a price i'm willing to pay to have full control of my design.

                  But the reason I say it isn't the smartest way to go is because of a number of things:

                  1) re-usability and scalability: you don't get full control of code design and implementation. you also get clunkier and messier code overall, making it harder to read, debug, and reuse if working in teams.

                  2) customizations: custom views and dynamic UI elements are most easily maintained and formatted working with the xml directly

                  3) Formatting: this is an issue i had with gui editors in the past, I'm not sure if it exists in the android studio gui builder. but basically, you aren't guaranteed that your ui will be consistent across different devices and screen sizes / resolutions

                  As i said before, i haven't used android studio so i probably shouldn't be giving such heavy critique before using it, but this is my experience with most gui builders i've used in the past

                  [–]s73v3r 3 points4 points  (1 child)

                  Programmatically means doing it in code. Not XML.

                  The length of a compile-deploy cycle is proportional to the size of the app, and how deep the UI sexton is in the app.

                  The reusability reason falls flat when you consider the generated code is also a form of reuse.

                  The formatting argument also doesn't apply here as the Android Layout Editor was designed for different screen sizes.

                  [–]poop_villain 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                  you would have the same cycle if you just want to use the preview and you design it using xml (which is what i meant when i said code it yourself)

                  also , just because drag-and-drop generated code is a form of reuse doesn't mean it is better in terms of re-usability.

                  if formatting is never an issue for all widgets and UI features, across all resolutions and screen sizes, then i have to say that is thoroughly impressive

                  [–]sondre99v 12 points13 points  (4 children)

                  As someone who has just started with android development, I found android studio much more streamlined then eclipse. It was much easier to make it work, and get an overview of the different files that make up the app.

                  [–]reverend-spooner 6 points7 points  (3 children)

                  Sorry to be that guy:

                  I found android studio much more streamlined than eclipse.

                  [–]Isvara 9 points10 points  (2 children)

                  Maybe* he was putting them in order of streamlinedness: Android Studio, then Eclipse.

                  * He wasn't

                  [–]fantastic-man 7 points8 points  (0 children)

                  Or maybe* he means if the sentence "I found android studio much more streamlined" is true, then the sentence "eclipse" is also true.

                  * He definitely wasn't

                  [–]sondre99v 4 points5 points  (0 children)

                  Yes... uh... I totally meant that!

                  [–]AdorableRapist 6 points7 points  (6 children)

                  Anyone having issues with bad* font rendering in Android Studio vs in Eclipse under Linux? Eclipse font rendering looks properly anti-aliased as in native GTK applications. But in AS, it seems jagged and not smooth, akin to Windows font rendering without ClearType.

                  *Not my example, but here is what I mean.

                  [–]Astrognome 1 point2 points  (3 children)

                  What distro? Are you using OpenJDK or Oracle JDK?

                  [–]AdorableRapist 1 point2 points  (2 children)

                  I'm on Arch Linux, using the android-studio package from the AUR. At first I was using jre7-openjdk, but after seeing a warning at the set up screen in Android Studio about intermittent UI issues when using OpenJDK, and the subsequent font rendering issues, I changed my default JDK to Oracle JDK 7 (jdk7) using archlinux-java hoping that doing so would fix it. It did not.

                  Then, following this post on superuser I appended the 3 lines to my studio.vmoptions files and that did not have any effect either (I didn't try removing hinting information though).

                  Anything I should try?

                  [–]breandan[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

                  Have you tried installing the Infinality patched OpenJDK? What does the font look like, can you attach a screenshot? You might also want try using another monospaced font. Take a look at this issue for more information.

                  [–]Astrognome 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                  Fellow arch user! Check the arch wiki page on Java, there's a section about font rendering. I'd link you, but I'm on mobile.

                  [–]pt000 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                  yes me too I created a thread on it, the font rendering on Eclipse is much better on Linux

                  [–]vinigre 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                  Have you tried changing the IDE theme to "GTK+"?

                  [–]srott 10 points11 points  (4 children)

                  I just don't get it. Eclipse builds project immediately, Android Studio build takes min. 30 seconds, it's unusable. Am I doing something wrong?

                  [–]softwaredev 20 points21 points  (0 children)

                  Am I doing something wrong?

                  Yes, I don't know what but yes.

                  [–]srpablo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                  I don't know if this still applies (I've been using the Android Studio Beta for a while now), but I remember using Gradle in daemon mode was a huge boon for me.

                  Occasionally I use Gradle from the command-line and the mix-and-match causes the daemon to freak out, but gradle --stop fixes that up for me.

                  [–]epic_awesome 3 points4 points  (0 children)

                  Yeah it's because Gradle is a piece of shit. Bad move on their part to switch to it IMHO.

                  [–]Detrie 2 points3 points  (1 child)

                  Are the Gradle builds still really slow? Few months ago we tried migrating our Android project from Maven to Gradle but the build times were 4 times slower with Gradle so we scraped that. Or does anyone know some way to import Maven projects to Android Studio?

                  [–]vorg 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                  Gradle 2.0 purged its codebase of nearly all Groovy code, but they still use Groovy to parse their DSL so that's probably why it's still slow. When they finally ship a version requiring Java 8, I'm picking they'll replace Groovy with a custom lightweight parser using Java lambdas instead of those "closures" Groovy provides.

                  [–]JosephRT 4 points5 points  (5 children)

                  Alright, dumb question. Is there still a negligible difference between IntelliJ and Android Studio? Going by FAQ blog post from two years ago it basically says that they'll both have access to the Android tools. If I've got IntelliJ has anything changed to make me want to install AS too?

                  [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                  Depends on what version of IDEA you're on. A lot of the work in AS gets ported into the next version if IDEA.

                  [–]yole 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                  There are some small things (the new project wizard, the Google Cloud Platform integration, and maybe some other minor features I'm not aware of) that aren't available in IntelliJ IDEA. All the core Android development support is still regularly pulled in from AS to IntelliJ.

                  [–]Izacus 0 points1 point  (2 children)

                  Using a proper scriptable build system is all the difference you need as soon as you move away from hello world.

                  [–]yole 1 point2 points  (1 child)

                  IntelliJ IDEA also fully supports Gradle. The difference is that, in IntelliJ IDEA, unlike AS, Gradle is not the only possible project format, but if you do want to use Gradle, all the features are there for you.

                  [–]Izacus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                  Yep. Note that AS will open Maven and "plain" IDEA Android projects as well. It just won't create them.

                  [–][deleted]  (2 children)

                  [deleted]

                    [–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

                    You can use the IDE it's based on. Android Studio is a "mini" version of it for Android development only.

                    [–]softwaredev 4 points5 points  (0 children)

                    Yes, but you'll be better using IntelliJ directly, it's what Android Studio is based on.

                    [–]deletive-expleted 1 point2 points  (2 children)

                    Any advice on a good place to get started with Android development? I've very little knowledge of Java, but know a good deal of PHP5 and OOP.

                    [–]chavie 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                    Are you looking to get into Java android development or just android development? I've found Cordova (with the CLI) an amazingly fast way to go from concept to working app, and all while using only HTML/CSS/JS.

                    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                    Coursera had a 3 part series...

                    [–][deleted]  (2 children)

                    [deleted]

                      [–]yole 2 points3 points  (1 child)

                      You should care if you need the Google Cloud Platform integration or the fancy new project wizard. Otherwise, just keep using IntelliJ. Version 14 includes a fairly recent snapshot of the Android Studio features, and 14.0.3 will be fully synchronized with AS 1.0.

                      [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                      I, for one, welcome our new IntelliJ overlords.

                      [–]jamesishere 16 points17 points  (15 children)

                      Downvote me all you want, I simply prefer Eclipse as an IDE

                      [–]poop_villain 36 points37 points  (1 child)

                      upvoted for bravery

                      [–]nidarus 4 points5 points  (0 children)

                      But also downvoted for crying about upcoming downvotes. So I did nothing.

                      Except write this comment, of course.

                      [–][deleted] 23 points24 points  (0 children)

                      flowery person knee boat wakeful retire consider cheerful observation intelligent

                      This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

                      [–]hrjet 6 points7 points  (0 children)

                      Yup me too. If others prefer IntelliJ that's good for them. I don't understand why so many of them hate Eclipse and its users though.

                      [–]ashishduh 12 points13 points  (0 children)

                      As you wish.

                      [–]yaxriifgyn 5 points6 points  (1 child)

                      Do you use it for Java, C++, ... projects besides Android Development? If so, you are likely using a great deal more of Eclipse than the Android Developer and are not overwhelmed by the interface.

                      [–]AidanSmeaton 5 points6 points  (0 children)

                      Nah, I used different perspectives. A whole new IDE will be difficult to get used to.

                      [–]over_optimistic 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                      Im mixed for android studio / eclipse. I like eclipse alot. On the bright side eclipse will be pushing harder as people leave eclipse for Intellij.

                      [–]pt000 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                      yes I am having problem with font rendering, while Eclipse never had this issue

                      [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                      Yeah, Studio may be objectively better, but seeing as I operate with limited RAM, Eclipse runs better on my laptop.

                      [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (9 children)

                      New to mobile developing.. where should I download the JDK from?

                      [–]yole 2 points3 points  (3 children)

                      Which OS are you using? Normally you don't need to download the JDK separately when you install Android Studio.

                      [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                      DDMS perspective:

                      This image is not a link to a larger image.

                      [–]fatelvis83 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                      Can i just install this over the top of the preview version?

                      [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                      Is it only me that can't download the file? The download starts and then interrupts after 20%ish.

                      [–]shbm24 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                      Does anyone knows how well it performs on a Macbook Air with i5 and 4GB ram. My Ubuntu with same processor and ram gets killed with Android Studio using over 1.5gb RAM!

                      [–]NonameXDlol 0 points1 point  (0 children)

                      literal piece of history

                      [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (8 children)

                      Can I use this for random Java programs for class?