Android

[srachit]

Anyone proficient Android developers around here?

I have been trying to learn android for a while now and finding it pretty difficult :/
Did anyone else have a similar problem in the start and does it get easier? And how did you learn android?

[hallsofvallhalla]

I use either Unity, appmobi, or another engine.
http://www.appmobi.com/

[Jackolantern]

I have a lot of problems with the design of the Java for Android platform. I was learning it at one point, but shelved it when I saw the whole page of XML needed to just show a single notification on the desktop. It just seemed completely overboard for what you were trying to do in some cases. Not that the entire SDK is like that, but enough parts of it are that annoyed me. That and I didn't care much for their XML UI creation. It is pretty dismal compared to .NET's XAML. Personally, I would probably make Android apps with HTML5, and games with their OpenGL system.

[Verahta]

Here are some Android tutorials that might help OP:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL ... O0GsWA4uNe

[Lord Rahl]

I've developed for android before, and if you really are interested in creating an app I would recommend you start with tutorials as well. I learned Java myself before android was something I looked into so I can't really comment on difficulty because the learning curve would be different.

I can recommend some videos and/or reading ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUOWNXGRc6g
http://developer.android.com/index.html

[Cayle]

I played around with developing for Anfroid. 2.x was not so bad to develop for and was pretty straightforward. The problem is that from 3.0 onwards, Android has this wonky thing called fragments. In principle, using fragments is supposed to allow you to seamlessly develop fro different screen sizes and orientations. In practice, it makes your development convoluted.

Android has a couple of nice features. One of these is intents - at least I think that's what it is called - where you can declare and consume services within android and mark those services public or private. E.g. you could build a shopping list app and make its database table publicly available to other apps. In practice, only the contacts are actually going to be used. Another REALLY, REALLY FREAKIN AWESOME feature is the ability to record arbitrary gestures during development and then use them as UI events.

But if you don't need these special features, then just develop with html5.

[Jackolantern]

I have to agree that I didn't like Fragments either, and found them hard to work with.

[Script47]

Bit late, but recently I ventured on Android app development and found that PhoneGap is very easy to use. Allows you to make apps using HTML(5), CSS and JS with other libraries like Mobile jQuery. This might be a good option or an alternative.

[Jackolantern]

Intel XDK (formerly App Mobi) is pretty good as well, but right now the king of HTML5 games-to-mobile is CocoonJS, mostly because it is much easier than the previous options and has much better performance. HTML5 game performance on Phone Gap is atrocious, but it works fine for regular apps.

[hallsofvallhalla]

I used app mobi quite a lot and loved it.