<story><title>Developing Android Apps: it&apos;s really not so bad</title><url>http://www.bendmorris.com/2011/08/developing-android-apps-its-really-not.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>martythemaniak</author><text>Something interesting happens when you ignore hype and prejudice and start paying attention to results: reality manifests itself, sometimes with surprising results.&lt;p&gt;So let me give you some results: A bit over a year ago I became 1/4 of our new mobile team (2 android guys, 2 iOS guys) at work. We set out to write our apps, which have the same design, use the same visual elements, the same API, and have the same features etc. A year later, with thousands of lines of code and man hours behind them, both apps are still at the same level as each other, with neither being ahead of the other.&lt;p&gt;In short, anyone that tells you Android development is harder than iOS is lying, incompetent or has an agenda. Or simply mistakes his opinion for reality.</text></comment>
<story><title>Developing Android Apps: it&apos;s really not so bad</title><url>http://www.bendmorris.com/2011/08/developing-android-apps-its-really-not.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>wallflower</author><text>With all due respect to the developer who wrote this post, standalone apps are relatively easy - you start jumping into the rabbit hole when you start getting into server API integration and doing processing off the main thread (AsyncTask, IntentService, Service, unit tests lions tigers oh my), layouts that don&apos;t suck, and custom animations... Making an Android app look sexy/good is an art in itself that I am still trying to learn.&lt;p&gt;At a certain point of app complexity, writing an Android app becomes less about writing an Android app and more about writing a well-structured, async/decoupled and performant app in Java.&lt;p&gt;Why is iPhone development relatively easy? Well, for one thing, the territory is well trodden. And it is based on the beautiful foundational framework of Cocoa, which has its roots in NeXTSTEP. Cocoa masters have been able to switch to iOS and tell people/show people how to code properly. Cocoa has been around for a while; the Android SDK is a WIP (but it has come a long, long way since Cupcake). Also, Java lacks compiler-level support for/doesn&apos;t have blocks and categories (two of the things that make Objective-C a joy). And, love it or hate it, you will start to miss CoreData when you don&apos;t have anything near equivalent on Android.&lt;p&gt;Some of my favorite resources for learning Android:&lt;p&gt;The best book for the money (frequently updated, author has huge SO reputation)&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://commonsware.com/Android/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://commonsware.com/Android/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reto Meier&apos;s blog&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.radioactiveyak.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.radioactiveyak.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Styling Android blog&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stylingandroid.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.stylingandroid.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Android UI Patterns&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://androiduipatterns.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://androiduipatterns.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Google source (note, not all code is pretty but it shows one way of getting things done).&lt;p&gt;Android is known for its flexibility, power, and customization. There are many ways to setup/do things, some good, some bad. That just doesn&apos;t apply to the end user&apos;s experience but to developing apps for it.</text></comment>