An Android Developer's Top 10 Gripes

gkunene writes in with the plaint of a veteran mobile application developer who vents his frustration with a list of 10 things he loves to hate about Android. "1. Open Source. Leave it to Google to place all the code for their handset platform in the hands of the masses. Not only does this mean anyone can download and roll a new version of their phone firmware, but it also means absolutely any maker can roll its own Android device. ... After all's said and done, I really must admit that Android, despite its relatively few flaws, is one of my favorite platforms to work with. Quite honestly, if my complaint about how the word 'Intent' makes for awkward grammatical constructions ranks in the top 10, I'd say the Android platform is doing pretty well for itself."

Comments

Nitwit suffering from Stockholm syndromw.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I read the stupid article and the author is a stupid attention seeking Stockholm syndrome suffering nitwit. Complains the use of the word "intent" of all things as a super class or an API construct. Oh, yeah go ahead and argue with the word subroutine and goto without a space when you are it. Wants the developers to be enslaved by a tyrannical system a la iPhone app approval process.

What I understand from the article is exciting. I am not a mobile device developer, but looks like Google is trying to create fundamental tools like grep, awk and sed in the mobile GUI world. If that is what Google is trying to do, it is a very wise thing. Some 40 years after debut grep, awk and sed are still going strong and power users use it every day. Even when command line interface is disappearing and text files are no longer the main repositories of data. But an updated set of such fundamental tools with a well integrated GUI and the ability to handle more forms of data would be a radical.

Looks like the author is so green behind the ears he does not even know where the concepts of such mini applications with well defined interactions with other mini ops are coming from. At least one thing is sure, he got the attention he craved so much.

Re:Nitwit suffering from Stockholm syndromw.

[Ukab the Great]

Stockholm syndrome? No.

A better metaphor is that Apple's like a strict parent, and Android developers are like the know-it-all teenagers who drop out of high-school because they "don't need all these people's rules" who then get smacked in the face with the stone cold reality of why their parents were so strict about them graduating.

Re:Unix way

[dunkelfalke]

which was fine for terminal applications 30+ years ago.

Re:What?

[TheKidWho]

Apple? The test was done by Motorola!

Re:why Java?

[GooberToo]

Generally Android's java is very optimized and is terrific and surprisingly fast

I have no idea where you get this impression. Android's dalvik engine is widely known to be roughly 20x slower than most other non-JIT'd java VMs. Its slow by any measure. And worse, most CPU intensive tasks which are commonly required for many mobile applications fall into a category where performance is especially poor for the current Dalvik implementation.

The good news is that Android's Dalvik will soon have its initial JIT offering which will speed up applications, on average, roughly 100%-150%. Once readily available, Dalvik will be 10x-500x slower than native code; depending on the nature of the code.