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Where Android Beats the iPhone
snydeq writes "Peter Wayner provides a developer's comparison of Android and the iPhone and finds Android not only competitive but in fact a better choice than the iPhone for many developers, largely due to its Java foundation. 'While iPhone developers have found that one path to success is playing to our baser instincts (until Apple shuts them down), a number of Android applications are offering practical solutions that unlock the power of a phone that's really a Unix machine you can slip into your pocket,' Wayner writes, pointing out GScript and Remote DB as two powerful tools for developers to make rough but workable custom tools for Android. But the real gem is Java: 'The pure Java foundation of Android will be one of the biggest attractions for many businesses with Java programmers on the staff. Any Java developer familiar with Eclipse should be able to use Google's Android documentation to turn out a very basic application in just a few hours. Not only that, but all of the code from other Java programs will run on your Android phone — although it won't look pretty or run as fast as it does on multicore servers.'"
"Not only that, but all of the code from other Java programs will run on your Android phone — although it won't look pretty or run as fast as it does on multicore servers.'""
No because if it has any type of UI odds are that uses swing or awt. Not only that but I doubt that the Android JVM has all the standard libraries that are available on Sun Java.
Yes they will know the syntax of the language but the libraries will be totally different.
Not to mention that is probably very little code running on servers that you will want to run on a phone.
And yes I write in java and I have an Android phone and I have looked at the Android SDK.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The pure Java foundation of Android
Android is not java. Yes it has java aspects but it is not java! It's bits of java with a customized Android API.It doesn't even run a normal JVM, it runs the Dalvik VM.
Not only that, but all of the code from other Java programs will run on your Android phone
Seriously, no. Just... no. Try compiling a program that uses Swing, AWT or javax stuff.
Don't get me wrong, I really like Android and hate iPhones. I have a G1 (lacking on RAM as much as it is). I've programmed for android although for fun, not the marketplace. I've even made my own ROM, again for fun. But claiming Android is Java and that everything that Java can do Android can also do natively is just naive
Who need's speling and grammar?
His point is from a flawed premise. The Android emulator lets you target any version of Android with any version of the software. They could have spent 0 in purchase costs in order to effectively test on every conceivable hardware platform. They set unreasonable testing criteria, paid too much to fulfill it, and now they're complaining about it.