About twice a year, I get involved in a project that requires me to do some Android development; so, about twice a year, I re-launch Google’s so-called..
About twice a year, I get involved in a project that requires me to do some Android development; so, about twice a year, I re-launch Google’s so-called integrated development environment, Android Studio, with fingers crossed; …and twice a year I find myself wincing with bitter disappointment, as I rediscover that it still has all the elegant, intuitive simplicity of a Rube Goldberg machine.
Let me hasten to stress that I’m not an OS partisan, or, to the extent that I am, I’m inclined towards Google. All my own smartphones have been Androids. I’ve been writing Android apps, both professionally and for fun, since 2009, when I first bought an HTC Magic. All my phones since have also been Android: Galaxy S2, Nexus 4, Moto X, and my shiny new Pixel.
But I also write iOS and tvOS apps; and despite my abstract disapproval of Apple’s hegemonic attitude towards software, whenever I launch its IDE XCode, I breathe a little easier. It’s fast. It’s slick. And even when it fails to be helpful, it rarely actually gets in my way — something which, as far as I can tell, is Android Studio’s fundamental core competency.
For instance: I have never actually succeeded at using its visual tools to lay out elements on a screen. I’m sure it’s theoretically possible; but every time I’ve tried, I have gotten so frustrated that I have just given up and written raw XML layout files instead. I have it on good authority that I am not alone in this. In XCode, conversely, I drag and drop with abandon and glee.
Out of the box, Studio doesn’t auto-import Java classes for me; the setting for doing so is buried deep within its impenetrable labyrinth of menus. Out of the box, Studio doesn’t tell me how to load any of the zillion support libraries I probably need, nor how to get Android’s (still painfully slow) emulator running.
