Google Android Studio Vs. Eclipse: Which Fits Your Needs?

Nerval's Lobster writes "Google's Android Studio is a development tool for Android based on the IntelliJ IDEA platform, one that managed to attract a lot of hype when it rolled out in mid-2013. Roughly a year later, the platform is still in 'early access preview,' and work on it is ongoing. Eclipse, on the other hand, is the granddaddy of IDEs; although it doesn't offer native Android support, it does have some nice tools to help you build Android applications—one such tool is the Google Plugin for Eclipse, made by Google. Developer and editor Jeff Cogswell compares Eclipse and its Google-made Google Plugin with Google's own Android Studio, developed with the help of the people who make IntelliJ IDEA. His verdict? Eclipse is beginning to show its age, especially when it comes to Android development, while Android Studio offers some noted benefits. 'Android Studio is still in preview mode, without an official release, even if that preview is in pretty fine shape—its status certainly shouldn't prevent you from using it, at least in my opinion,' he writes. Do you agree?"

Comments

Not surprising

[Shados]

I haven't done Android development, but IntelliJ IDEA has been ahead of Eclipse for ages, so this isn't surprising.

Eclipse was a good IDE (relative to others) for a brief period of time early in its life, give or take 10 years ago (i think?), and that was it. Everyone else quickly caught up, Visual Studio was brought up to speed (with plugins at least), IDEA came into the spotlight, and the only reason Eclipse was still popular was because it was a) it was free, b) people learnt it in school, c) people didn't even realize there was better IDEs out there for Java (and other non-Microsoft languages).

Re:Not surprising

[Jane Q. Public]

"Eclipse was a good IDE (relative to others) for a brief period of time early in its life, give or take 10 years ago (i think?), and that was it."

Actually, Visual BASIC (and subsequently Delphi) were the real "Grandaddy" IDEs. Eclipse came along much later (2001) and was originally for Java projects. Visual BASIC and its brethren (soon to become Visual Studio) then borrowed from some of the good ideas in Eclipse.

Did Eclipse "keep up"? Arguably not. It is a Java "base" platform that was adapted to other uses by other people. So a lot of the good ideas that came out of that were not incorporated back into that base.

On the other hand, some of the IDEs that rose up to challenge Eclipse have their own limitations: NetBeans and so on.

But my main point here was that Visual Studio's ancestry goes way back before Eclipse came out.

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Visual BASIC (and subsequently Delphi) were the real "Grandaddy" IDEs. Eclipse came along much later (2001) and was originally for Java projects. Visual BASIC and its brethren (soon to become Visual Studio) then borrowed from some of the good ideas in Eclipse.

You obviously have never used GNU/Emacs.

Re:Not surprising

[metamatic]

Yup, I switched from Eclipse to IntelliJ IDEA for my regular Java development as well as Android.

It's faster, leaner, more helpful, and has a far less cluttered UI.

I just wish it wasn't $199, I'd totally buy a personal license for $99. (There's zero chance of my employer buying it for me.)

Re:Not surprising

[Kz]

You obviously have never used GNU/Emacs.

or Turbo Pascal

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Eclipse as my IDE of choice when developing console C/C++ software. Why? Because it integrates GCC very well (my compiler of choice) but perhaps more importantly, it's one of the best cross-platform IDEs for C/C++ development out there. I'm not going to invest time into learning Visual Studio if it means my skills and knowledge over an IDE are locked into Windows only (which doesn't make sense to me in 2014). At least with Eclipse I'll know how to use the IDE in Windows and Linux without relearning anything.

Re:Not surprising

[Shados]

Of course. I guess I wasn't clear. What I was getting at was that roughly 10 years ago, when Eclipse was a few years old, it was really, really good, and did a lot of things better than Visual Studio and other IDEs (even if you consider Visual Studio with VB6 and .NET vs Eclipse with Java). But that didn't last long, as they caught up pretty quickly.

Re:Not surprising

[ahabswhale]

As someone who has used IntelliJ since version 3, I can say without equivocation that it has always been well ahead of Eclipse. The only reason Eclipse was as popular as it was is that it's free and I've found programmers to be the cheapest mofos on the planet.

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are doing C/C++ development you might look at codelite or code::blocks.

Both are lightweight, positively snappy.
Both are cross platform (Windows, Linux, and iOS).
Both are developed by groups that eat their own dog food.

For what it's worth, I also know some people that use Visual Studio for editing, and then cross compile via plain old make.

Personally I found Eclipse to be slow, obtuse, and clunky. But that was a while ago. However I keep hearing people complain about Eclipse being slow and people saying, increase you memory or get a solid state disk. So yeah.

Not sure about Eclipse since it's no longer on my machine but.

Visual Studio with a project open: 83MB of ram taken.
Codelite: 37MB.

Re:Not surprising

[gl4ss]

but you know what is funny? they said that gradle is separated from the android studio.

but if your project gets in a state where gradle just fails in IDE but works from commandline... then it doesn't feel like that(you need to delete gradles caches to get it working again in ide and the error message sounds like you're using wrong version of gradle even if you're not).

and what is gradle? it's the "new" android builder, replacement for the older ant based system. gradle takes care of dependencies automatically. when it works it's nice, but when it doesn't.. and I don't know if it's possible to use NDK with windows with gradle. all I know is that for that stuff I'm still sticking in with the old build system since it works and doesn't mystically break when a path has a : in it(in windows that's every path and no the cygwin style paths didn't work).

but will google ever finish anything? that is the question.... basically the new system is better, the new ide is better, but the old one is more mature and just works. the view layouter, xml wizards etc kind of suck balls in both the equal amount.

what sucks is that apparently there is no good IDE with good integration with NDK(c/c++ android development). code::blocks can apparently be configured to be okayish for it but not perfect. eclipse sort of works for it and some people say it works well but hey some people think sticking up hot coals up the ass is fun..(eclipse isn't imho really nice for c++ dev at all.. and something that would make it less of a hassle to mess around with makefiles etc would be nice).

(oh and google provides the "ADT" customized version of eclipse so that's why people are using it, comes with sdk and works almost out of the box. almost means that you still have to run the sdk config tool to download the sdk modules to actually do anything with the sdk..)

Re:Not surprising

[Jane Q. Public]

You obviously have never used GNU/Emacs.

or Turbo Pascal

Despite all the configuration options and plugins and the like available for it, Emacs still does not meet most peoples' definition of IDE.

No, I did not use Turbo Pascal until its later incarnation in Delphi. But Microsoft had character-based IDEs for some of its BASIC products well before Visual BASIC as well (I.e., late 80s.)

In Turbo Pascal's heyday, I did not even know it existed. If I had, I probably would have been delighted since I had started programming in Pascal in the late 70s, long before I became familiar with Microsoft products. I finally got my hands on a copy of Turbo Pascal only after I had learned to use Delphi on my own, and I never really got much chance to do anything with it.

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

I used IntelliJ for a long time, back in something like 2004 (or so, my memory is fuzzy), I realized Eclipse really had caught up and it was IntelliJ's turn to play catch up. This was especially true when I needed community developed plugin support. Is much of the Eclipse community stuff crappy? Sure, but there was orders of magnitude more of it and I usually found something that worked fine. This was not true in IntelliJ, often I had to write macros to just open up where a file was located and do command line or shell stuff (hell, I even remember back when the source code control integration was complete ass, while Eclipse's worked fine).

Has IntelliJ caught back up? I'd argue that some of their new features are super cool and I'd love to use them, but if I want my employer to buy it it has to save costs over Eclipse, not sure I can justify that (maybe for Webstorm). The developer license was cheap back when it launched (1/10 the cost of similar products from the likes of Borland, etc.), but these days it actually is pricey. As well, the community edition omits a lot of critical features, I think they know it's not suitable for a real workplace and might as well call it the "academic edition".

But now let's take a look at a random use case, Spring based project with REST services, described by Maven 3 (or hell, take your pick, between Maven 3 and Gradle). So right there that says Spring STS (based on Eclipse).

Does IntelliJ replace and exceed the value of STS (which is pretty damned good) along with the stellar Eclipse Maven plugins, etc.? My only beef is an institutional problem, we bet on Mercurial while clearly Git has won, so Hg tooling kind of blows.

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Try going back to 1986 and THINK Technologies' Lightspeed C IDE for the Mac.

Re:Not surprising

[DickBreath]

> > You obviously have never used GNU/Emacs.

> or Turbo Pascal

of Edlin.

Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Android Studio > Eclipse.

Re:Yes

[erikkemperman]

Android Studio > Eclipse.

For Android development, perhaps.

We're comparing apples and oranges here. When you develop for Android in Eclipse, you're just making use of a bunch of plugins. Other projects you might be doing plain Java, or web development in HTML/CSS/JS, server side scripting in PHP, database stuff in SQL. All in Eclipse, if you find the right extensions.

Now for each of these you might point at some alternative that does that particular thing better, in some way. But I double dare you to name one platform which allows you to do all within the same IDE.

Re:Yes

[stg]

IntelliJ IDEA has a ton of plugins, including their other products that support specific languages. For example, they have products for Python (which I used myself and is very nice), Ruby, Java, PHP, Javacript/HTML etc.
All of these work from IntelliJ IDEA in the form of a plugin (AFAIK, I just used PyCharm).


Plus according to their page they have 1083 plugins. Including several for databases.

So I think that covers all you asked for, doesn't it?

Re:Yes

[JavaBear]

Definitely Android Studio. When I used Eclipse for Android development, it felt as if I spent half my time fighting the IDE, rather then my code.

Re:Yes

[Aryden]

netbeans.

Re:Yes

[gnoshi]

You can't use plugins without a paid version of IntelliJ, which Android Studio is not.

Re:Yes

[stg]

Are you sure? I am not going to test it out, but there is a tab on their plugin page for the Ultimate Edition with 1083 plugins, and another for the Community Edition (the free one) with 1015 plugins. They might not include their specific plugins for those languages, but it would be very weird to have separate plugin listings and not support plugins at all...

Of course, either way the question I was answering didn't mention that the IDE had to be free. I think IntelliJ is very reasonably priced (US$200 for individual developers, which would be my case), although I didn't have any reason to buy it myself yet.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer netbeans over eclipse. It's my go to IDE for when I use an IDE. That said, android development support is where it totally sucks.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay! I'm not the only one!

I'm mostly a hobbyist, though, I haven't done any "real" (aka, paid-for) programming in over a decade. I started using Netbeans back in '99 when the name actually referred to the company that made it and the IDE was the "Netbeans Developer", then it got bought by Sun.

When people around me started using Eclipse, I gave it a try. Didn't like it. My own personal benchmark for a Java IDE at the time was: how fast can I create a JFrame with a JLabel a JTextfield and a JButton on it; you click on the button and whatever text is on the textfield gets put on the label. that's it, with the least hand-typed code possible. My development at the time was only for Desktop apps (I never did any servlets or jsp or any kind of server-side code of any kind, except that one crazy week with PHP). And I have to say I couldn't do it in Eclipse, aparently I needed to download some extra stuff and whatnot to make it possible, F* it I can do that with Netbeans right out of the box.

Now, for Android development, which I sorta picked up at the end of last year. It seems more friendly to do it on Eclipse, as most of the official documentation is focused towards that. The new Android Developer Studio, afaik, is based on IntelliJ IDEA so using either of them is probably not bad either. But I'm sticking with Netbeans, I've been using the NB Android plugin with NB 7.4 and it works perfectly (for my needs).

Re:Yes

[Adam Jorgensen]

IntelliJ Ultimate is probably the best IDE you can buy if you develop in more than one non-M$ language.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

I second that.

Re: Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure you can. Not all plugins work with the free IDE but many do. Check it out for yourself.

Re:Yes

[realdpk]

You can't use plugins without a paid version of IntelliJ, which Android Studio is not.

A lot of plugins are compatible with the free version of IntelliJ and Android Studio. Check it out: http://plugins.jetbrains.com/?...

Wait

[ArcadeMan]

What's wrong with notepad?

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

Um. It's not vi, the editor God himself created on the eight day?

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with notepad?

Lots of things: It's a horrible editor. But that isn't to say there isn't something wrong with IDEs.

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

No Brief emulation.

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

No automatic indent

Re:Wait

[kthreadd]

...by writing it in Emacs.

Re:Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I used to think I was 1337 with my plain text programming environment. Then I learned that efficiency is more important than feeling 1337.

Re:Wait

[TENTH SHOW JAM]

To fix a small error in a script on the fly, notepad isn't bad. To make readable code a real IDE is great. To keep 40 or 50 concepts flying round your head, an IDE is almost indispensible. Being able to code with notepad is useful in select circumstances. For everything else there is

Re:Wait

[xvan]

Notepad is horrible, it doesn't even recognizes the text encoding... WordPad, on the other hand...

Re: Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

Best lightweight text editor for Windows is Notepad++ hands down. While not an IDE per se, it recognizes a couple dozen common languages and can do auto code highlighting, indenting, has built in tidy function, regex search and replace, copious encoding options, a plugin architecture, the list goes on and on. The best part is that if you just need to zip in an out and create a quickie txt file the UI stays out of the way, so the tool doesn't lose any points for being overkill. And being one of those aforementioned *ahem* cheap ass devs the fact that it's free is nice too.

Re:Wait

[Bugamn]

I think you mean ed.

Re:Wait

[DickBreath]

> What's wrong with notepad?

What's wrong with Edlin?

Excuse me?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Eclipse, on the other hand, is the granddaddy of IDEs;

It isn't but that's okay.

Author sounds inexperienced, they must not use IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate

Re:Excuse me?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Eclipse, on the other hand, is the granddaddy of IDEs;

It isn't but that's okay.

Author sounds inexperienced, they must not use IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate

You know the author is inexperienced when one of their reasons is "Eclipse is *old*" (you can almost see him wrinkle his nose). Apparently he's unaware of just how old IntelliJ is...

He's also biased, he basically says that Android Studio is better even though it only supports Gradle, because Gradle is good (despite the fact that Eclipse will support Gradle just as wellAND a bunch of others). How bloody biased do you have to be to give that point to Android Studio?

Netbeans

[relisher]

As soon as Google or some other company releases a platform for Android development similar to Netbeans, count me in. At this point, the process of getting Netbeans to work for Android development is just a complete hassle.

Re:Netbeans

[Jane Q. Public]

Here's the problem, though: TFA compares Eclipse (which is a "general-purpose" IDE, usable for many languages) to Android Studio (which is specific to Android), and comes out saying Eclipse is wanting.

Well, duh.

But hey, if you're comparing apples to oranges by trying to see which one thrives more in a tropical climate, guess which one you're going to pick? No news here, move along now.

And I think this unbalanced comparison is evident in the discussion of Gradle integration. Both can use Gradle. But Eclipse can use other things, too while Android Studio cannot. Very big point goes to Eclipse in this regard. But the reviewer (inexplicably) gave that point to Android Studio instead. I disagree.

Yes, Eclipse is old. It probably isn't as good at Android development as Android Studio. But it IS good at other things that Android Studio doesn't even do. So it's hardly an across-the-board comparison.

(I say that even though I'm not one who really cares for Eclipse very much.)

Re:Netbeans

[Hewligan]

I am sure the three other people who use Netbeans feel the same way...

I'm sure they do, too, given how much better it is than Eclipse...

Re:Netbeans

[Lawrence_Bird]

I use IDEA Community edition, not the 'Android Studio' repackaged version. From what I understand, there really is not a lot of difference between them.

Re:Netbeans

[Odin79]

I have been using NetBeans for all my Android development with the help of the NBAndroid plugin for quite some time now without any major issues. There are no UI design tools with it but I get by without them just fine. Give it a try if you have not already.

Re:Netbeans

[Curtman]

They are both Java IDEs. Android Studio is IntelliJ, not specific to Android any more than the Android plugin is for Eclipse. I don't think the author was saying Eclipse sucks, just that this new product is very good for Android development. I tried it this past weekend, and it was a pleasure to use.

DevBytes: Android Studio

Re:Netbeans

[Adam Jorgensen]

I used to be a big NetBeans fan but since Sun died and was consumed by Oracle it's become an Also Run IDE. Oracle, as is the case with many of the things it buys, has basically abandoned NetBeans and it really just can't keep up with the spectacular work done by the guys at JetBrains.

Re:Netbeans

[Jane Q. Public]

"They are both Java IDEs. Android Studio is IntelliJ, not specific to Android any more than the Android plugin is for Eclipse. "

You're not arguing with me, you're reinforcing my point.

If he wanted to avoid comparing apples to oranges, he would be comparing Eclipse to IntelliJ. But he wasn't... he was comparing Eclipse to Android Studio.

Re:Netbeans

[Curtman]

Or he could have said Eclipse wit ADT, but that would be cumbersome and stupid.

Horrible article

[AuMatar]

With a very biased verdict. Giving Android Studio the edge because of Gradle support? That's great- if you want to use gradle. I don't. I don't even know what it is- before Android Studio came out I'd never heard of it. And I have better things to do than play with build tools unless it offers a huge advantage- which it doesn't. The fact its impossible to use Android Studio without switching is a negative, not a positive as Eclipse supports both. The edge here should go to Eclipse for giving you choice between build systems.

UI? The UI that you know is better than one you don't- always. If I have to spend even an hour finding new options, that's an hour I'll probably never make back. Eclipse has lots of flaws, but I'm used to those. The real advantage here is Eclipse if you know it, or draw if you don't.

Basically his argument seems to boil down to he likes new shiny stuff. No thanks.

Re:Horrible article

[stewsters]

Intellij supports both, I used a non-gradle build last week. Not sure about the Android Studio version, but I can imagine it's possible, just not the default in the basic project setup. That being said, gradle is nice if you have a lot of dependencies in maven.

Re:Horrible article

[Anonymous Coward]

> The fact its impossible to use Android Studio without switching is a negative, not a positive as Eclipse supports both

So does just downloading a regular copy of Intellij instead of the stripped down Android Studio version. Plus if you pick up a licensed copy of Intellij and get access to their SQL development bits, this has some pretty nice android integration that allows you to sync the private sqlite db of your app and query it straight from the IDE. Hell, it even provides auto completions based on the sync'd db when working on SQL stuff.

Or how about, I don't know, writing scala for android? Easy as well with intellij. Android studio is just a stripped down turd that's a beta test for all sorts of shit that barely works from the get-go. Guess what happens when that turd gets glossed and becomes something useful? It works itself back upstream right into intellij.

Re:Horrible article

[organgtool]

So your argument is that the article is wrong since it doesn't come to the conclusion you've already made up in your mind without ever using the other product in the comparison. That may be great for you, but for someone starting out and wondering which IDE would suit their needs better, the article may very well make sense.

Re:Horrible article

[farble1670]

the decision to base everything on gradle baffles me a bit.

gradle itself, while apparently existing for a long time, has had some pretty bad bugs in it and it's plugins in the time i've been using it (last 6 months or so).

that, and i can't figure out why it's better. it is different however. there are fewer examples of how to do things then with maven or ant, and there's often multiple ways to accomplish the same thing, and they are both given as examples in the same doc with no explanation

Re:Horrible article

[metamatic]

that, and i can't figure out why it's better.

Both ANT and Maven represent your build script as huge horrific XML files. Gradle uses a simple human-readable JSON-like syntax.

That and ANT is goddamn slow.

Re:Horrible article

[swillden]

UI? The UI that you know is better than one you don't- always.

Hyperbole much?

The UI you know definitely has an enormous advantage in short-term productivity. Longer-term... it depends on features and workflow.

That's if you're working by yourself. If you're working with others, using the same stuff as your colleagues will likely have an even bigger impact. I just started working on Android and the fact that most of my colleagues are using Android Studio will almost certainly make it a better choice for me even though I've used Eclipse since before IBM released it publicly.

Re:Horrible article

[farble1670]

Both ANT and Maven represent your build script as huge horrific XML files

you are really going to pick your build system on how pretty the script is?

yes, because the most important thing to me in a build system that my build scripts be as few characters as possible, right? the only thing that matters is stability and lots of good examples of how to do things you want to do.

That and ANT is goddamn slow.

ant was lightning fast compared to gradle. and yeah, i know because our company has fully cut over from eclipse + ant to android studio + gradle.

it takes nearly 30s to build just one of our android apps. upgrading from gradle 1.6 > 1.8 > 1.11, each upgrade has considerably worse performance, despite the docs claiming to have improved performance. gradle 1.11 is so much slower than 1.8 it's ridiculous. i can't even believe it was released. it does however give a progress indicator during the build now. great.

Re:Horrible article

[hax4bux]

The Android plugin for gradle is awful: slow to market and still incomplete.

I don't give a hoot that gradle uses groovy or has a JSON syntax. I want stuff that works, and this isn't it.

OTOH, I have managed to bill lots of hours writing gradle tasks, etc to patch up this broken POS for customers who read too many magazine articles. So it isn't all bad.

Re:Horrible article

[Arkham]

With a very biased verdict. ... No thanks.

I was going to post something just like this, but you beat me to it.

Eclipse is "the devil you know" for 99% of Android developers (and probably a majority of Java developers). It may not be as great as IntelliJ or IDEA or NetBeans for somethings, but it's functional and has worked well for a long time. It's got plugins for everything, good git integration, decent UI build tools, good support for JNI and ABI cross compilation, and it was used for 99% of the apps in the Google Play store.

This Android Studio IDE may very well be awesome (I haven't tried it as Eclipse works for me), but this article does not make any case for it whatsoever.

Re:Horrible article

[ahabswhale]

I would agree that gradle is far better than Maven and Ant when it comes to syntax and flexibility but it's not known for it's definitely not known for its fantastic performance.

Re:Horrible article

[AuMatar]

In 13 years I've never worked at a place where everyone used the same IDE. Generally there was a mix of IDE users, terminal vim and emacs enthusiasts, and a few people in between (using souped up graphical text editors). There's no good reason for forcing people to use the same editors- the loss of efficiency from learning a new way will never be made up.

Re:Horrible article

[Splab]

So, once you have learned an UI, you refuse to upgrade?

I haven't tried Android Studio, but I am using IntelliJ Ultimate Edition - for the life of me, I can see any reason why anyone would ever prefer Eclipse over IntelliJ.

Re:Horrible article

[swillden]

It's not a matter of forcing. I can use whatever I like. But I'm stepping into an entirely new space and being able to ask questions of my colleagues and get quick and accurate answers is really, really valuable.

I've been using Eclipse since before it was Eclips

[technomom]

I've been using Eclipse since it had its genesis within IBM, so despite it's warts, I'm pretty used to it. I do like what I see in the Android Studio though, I'm just waiting for it to come out of beta.

Which is the "... For Dummies" Version?

[CanHasDIY]

OK, maybe not "Dummies" persay, but people like myself who would like to at least wet our beaks in app development, but know approximately dick about good coding practices? Or coding in general?

Having set up both, I'd say Android Studio probably fits the needs of the total noob moreso than Eclipse, but what do I know? I'm a coding noob.

Intellij == Speed

[bongey]

I use pretty much every editor you can imagine. I miss it when programming in c++ .
Intellij is proof you can make very fast editor in java.

Re:Intellij == Speed

[Anonymous Coward]

Intellij is proof you can make very fast editor in java.

Indeed. I use Webstorm (a subset of Intellij) for elaborate HTML5+WebGL javascript work. It's indistinguishable from a native app in terms of performance.

I prefer

[hypergreatthing]

Android4Basic: http://www.basic4ppc.com/

Re:I prefer

[Anonymous Coward]

Android4Basic: http://www.basic4ppc.com/

Sorry; had to mod you down a notch; the web page in the link in your comment blocks viewing it because of my blocking of the Facebook plugin. This is the first time it has happened since I started doing this a couple of months ago. If this is a new strategy

Re:I've been using Eclipse since before it was Ecl

[CastrTroy]

I don't have a problem with Eclipse, but Android development as a whole is pretty terrible from my point of view. I've tried a few times to make an app, and I just found the whole process quite terrible.

Slow

[gameboyhippo]

I'd love to love Android Studio, but on my PC it's slower than molasses going uphill on crutches. I also can't figure out how to set up an environment in Android Studio that allows me to mix java projects with android projects or use maven to manage my projects. Admittedly that took a while to figure that out with Eclipse as well.

Re:Slow

[z4ce]

If you want to mix projects you have to use IntellJ with the "Android-plugin" instead of Android Studio.

Re:Slow

[gameboyhippo]

Is the plugin the "same thing" as Android Studio?

Re:Slow

[stewsters]

Import your main project, then import your sub projects as modules.
You can then include them by adding dependencies. File->project structure->modules->dependencies -> green arrow to select one of your sub projects and add it.
Click the checkbox in the export column if you want to export that library when you export.
Not sure about the maven management of the projects, but I have used gradle to import maven artifacts.

Re:I've been using Eclipse since before it was Ecl

[ericloewe]

Care to elaborate? My (very limited) experience is only with desktop programming, but I'd like to know what the problem with Android (or any other mobile platform) development is.

EMACS

[Lodragandraoidh]

Technically, isn't EMACS the granddaddy of all IDEs? In comparison, Eclipse is 'Johnny Come Lately'.

Re: EMACS

[cerberusss]

It's more an OS than an editor.

Re:EMACS

[Xtifr]

Turbo Pascal came out in 1983, two years before the first release of GNU Emacs. However, Maestro I (1975) seems to be generally credited as being the first IDE (although some argue for Dartmouth BASIC from 1964).

So, uh, yeah. :)

Re: EMACS

[infosinger]

http://xkcd.com/378/

Re:EMACS

[Anonymous Coward]

Emacs long, long predates GNU Emacs.

Neither fits my need

[Anonymous Coward]

All my Android development has been done with vi. Works with all languages and APIs. Works on all platforms. Works the best.

Tried Android Studio the other day

[slapout]

I used Eclipse to develop an Android app back in the days of Android 2. They other day I downloaded and installed Android Studio so that I could create a simple app. Android Studio did have designer (in Eclipse I did all layout in xml, but I believe Eclipse has a designer too.) The main issue I had with Android Studio is that it would just disappear all of the sudden. One minute it was there and the next it was gone.

Re:Tried Android Studio the other day

[Daniel Hoffmann]

Try increasing the JVM memory (-Xms in the init parameters I believe). Ironically I used to have this exact same problem in eclipse, I can't tell where to set those parameters in IntelliJ though.

Re:I've been using Eclipse since before it was Ecl

[Anonymous Coward]

I would start complaining by incredibly slow Android simulator. Example: open virtual keyboard on that virtual device. Press any key. After three seconds, letter appears on virtual screen. Three seconds wait time for one key press. I'm not exaggerating.

The rest of it is not much faster.

Command-line with ant and your favorite editor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only person who has written several Android apps (on more than 1x10^6 devices) with ant, my favorite editor, and my own custom tools? I find any IDE maddeningly limiting.

Re:Command-line with ant and your favorite editor?

[Anonymous Coward]

I repair my car with nothing but iron ore, coke, and a smelter. People who don't (like you) are inferior to me.

Re:Command-line with ant and your favorite editor?

[Anonymous Coward]

No you are not. Android/Java, OSX/Objective-C, Java, C++/Symbian (obs) - none of them needs an IDE. IDEs are annoying. Everything you need to know belongs in your head. Using your head works the best.

Migration is not easy

[z4ce]

The eclipse "export" to gradle function barely works. Importing an eclipse project into Android Studio doesn't really work either. If you create a build.gradle file, that gets you further along, but things in Android Studio still behave funny especially with identifying the "modules." In the end, if you're looking at migrating I strongly recommend just creating a new project and copying your source and resource files into the latest android file structure and gradle build system.

Easy to start

[cerberusss]

My first job involved Java and I used Eclipse for that. In the meantime, I spot another job which involves C++, Python and Objective-C. Recently I wanted to quickly hammer out an Android app and I was pleasantly surprised by Android Studio. In three days, I got a basic five-screen app running to display a JSON-pooping web service.

It works like you expect a modern IDE to work. And that's all I needed.

Did my last project entirely in Android Studio

[maccodemonkey]

I liked it better than Eclipse, no separate Android SDK installation/package manager to maintain. I just download and it worked. The UI is a little nicer.

However it doesn't solve my big complaints about Android IDEs in general:
1) Native code development still sucks. It sucks less on Eclipse (as in it exists at all on Eclipse), but it's a pain to set up, a pain to use, and a pain to debug. I actually just gave up on it attaching the debugger, and starting adding logging to me native code. Seriously Google, if you want me to start taking Android seriously for developing big performance sensitive things, some decent tools for C/C++ development would be good.
2) The build system... I don't know what's up with Android Studio defining it's own project format, and then on top of that adding a build system with build system files beneath it. I still have projects that open and build, but tell me the build system is set up wrong. The one thing I like about Xcode is the project and the build manifest are the same file. I'm not maintaining a project that then manages some Gradle config or something. I mean, if I want to I can add an external build system to Xcode. But most of the time I don't need that level of build management. If Android really wants to go the external build system route, just automatically generate the stuff I need every time I hit build so I don't have to worry about checking it in to source control. I don't care if it's spinning an Gradle config off just as long as I don't have to see it and worry about it. If I want to manually grab a Gradle config to throw at some other build system, make it optional.
3) The analyzer tools compared to the iOS toolchain just aren't anywhere near good enough. The data the tools do give back out is presented poorly compared to Apple's Instruments tool, and I've never gotten the tools working for native code, which is usually where I spend the most time caring about performance.
4) This isn't as much a complaint about the tools as much as Android, but Android is just behind in general on performance toolkits. Apple has a great NEON optimized toolkit in Accelerate for DSP and image work. There is no equivalent on Android, although 5 years in, a few open source projects are finally starting up around putting together a NEON accelerated library of functions.
5) x86 Android Emulator with native GPU support. It exists, but it's usually not as well maintained. There are some third party tools trying to fill that gap, but c'mon guys. That's a basic necessity. An ARM based emulator is great for simulating actual ARM calls, but most of the time I'd rather be in the x86 emulator.

Re:Did my last project entirely in Android Studio

[cerberusss]

I totally agree here. Compared to Xcode, development for Android is nowhere as slick.

But still, I managed to hammer out a simple (Java-based) app with a minimum of fuss. And I didn't need to screw around with Gradle.

Re:Did my last project entirely in Android Studio

[Anonymous Coward]

An ARM based emulator is great for simulating actual ARM calls, but most of the time I'd rather be in the x86 emulator.

Well, you know, it's java, instead of an emulator you can run it on your desktop because it is crossplatf... oh, nevermind, I'll stick to C/C++, thankyouverymuch.

Re:Did my last project entirely in Android Studio

[Anonymous Coward]

defining it's own project format

Why the FUCK are (presumably educated) people still having trouble with its vs it's? It makes me twitch every time I see this.

It's not hard to work out which one to use - "it's" is a contraction; it expands to "it is". So in the above phrase you're saying "defining it is own project format". That clearly makes no sense, it clearly sounds wrong, ergo, the alternative "its" is the correct choice. So easy to understand and yet it's lost among most people. Knowing the correct variant to use makes you sounds more intelligent anyway, and goodness knows we need more smart people in the world.

Broken

[Luthair]

I tried to use Android Studio a few times in the early days but could never get it to launch. Failed with non-helpful errors and none of the solutions

Full disclosure - I'm an inactive Eclipse committer so while one might argue I have a dog in the race I should also be competent enough to get it to run!

Re: Broken

[cerberusss]

Why would you comment if your experience is too old to be relevant?

Re: Broken

[hax4bux]

The same reason all the IntelliJ users who are not doing Android development have to chime in.

Android Studio is Excellent

[snard6]

I've been an Android developer for 3 years, I've used eclipse extensively as well as Android Studio extensively. Android Studio kicks the pants off of Eclipse. The simple truth you don't realize how painful and terrible the whole Eclipse experience is until you've switched. It solved a ton of my pain points and I would never consider going back. All of my projects have been converted to Gradle, and the savings I receive from that build system are remarkable. It has its own pain points (mostly due to being a pre-1.0 release. Builds break from update-to-update, weird issues arise trying to go from eclipse to Android Studio. Gradle doesn't fully support native. So there are definitely use cases where Eclipse is still a necessary evil. But if you can go the route of Android Studio do it, you'll thank me later.

Re:I've been using Eclipse since before it was Ecl

[Sene]

I agree with this, the simulator is horribly slow, even on a core i7 with 12GB of RAM. I guess the arm emulation is not very well optimized.

Android Studio best there is

[pchenden]

I've been an Android developer for three years now. Android Studio has impressed me very much and I've used it every day for the last six months.
It's miles ahead of Eclipse in terms of useability and features.
Android Studio actually makes the coding more fun, as I don't have to spend so much time on the boring and annoying bits!
The second place goes to Intellij IDEA, in my opinion.

I can see no reason to use Eclipse unless you need C-language support for NDK development.
Eclipse doesn't integrate with Google's new Gradle-based build tools for Android. It blows the old ant-based build-tools out of the water.
If you're still using the old on ant/maven build tools for Android, you have a enjoyable experience to look forward to after migrating :)

A painful transition, but worth it (barely)

[tunabomber]

I switched to Android Studio right after it came out, mostly because my Eclipse install needed to be updated- which usually means having to reinstall the Android SDK and re-import my projects (a chore).
It ended up being some serious work to import my projects to Android Studio. I wouldn't recommend it if Eclipse is still working smoothly for you.
The main thing I like about Android Studio is that I heavily use RubyMine for server-side work and the interface is nearly identical.
The other big advantage is that all the config files are a lot more transparent and repairable than those used by Eclipse.

Gradle is much more transparent and portable than Eclipse's build system, but it's still pretty frustrating how slow it is. I think moving to Android Studio/Gradle doubled my build times.
Finally, Android Studio is still pretty unstable and it usually takes an hour or two of surgery to get my project to run again after an upgrade.

Re:A painful transition, but worth it (barely)

[robmv]

I don't know why you had to reimport your projects. I have an Eclipse workspace from the 2.x era, that have never been replaced by a new one, every Eclipse update is pain free with my settings, plugins need to be updated if they aren't compatible, but the workspace with the imported projects have never been a problem for me

Re:I've been using Eclipse since before it was Ecl

[DarwinSurvivor]

I've found it runs much faster if you emulate an x86 processor and enable host GPU support.

"The UI that you know is better than one you don't

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree to a certain extent. Unfortunately, the Android support in Netbeans is severely lacking, and that's the UI I know (and love).

I tried switching

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried switching to Android Studio, because I needed to change one of my employer's apps to have different flavours (paid, free etc). They basically differed in what features would be available, and it looked like Gradle would make this simple without making multiple projects. Unfortunately, I had a horrendous time figuring out how to get it to actually build the app in the first place, because it always complained that it couldn't find a library project, even though I made sure to link to it. I ended up having to give up and continue using eclipse, splitting the project up into four projects (only one of which was substantial), because my bosses always want everything yesterday.

Re:I've been using Eclipse since before it was Ecl

[Jane Q. Public]

In a nutshell, Android is Java on a Linux base with Java libraries for "system" calls, and (usually) lots of description of interface elements via XML.

I'm happy with Eclipse

[X10]

I've been an Android developer for over 5 years, I've been using Eclipse for Java development almost since it came out. If Android Studio is better, I won't argue, I don't know. But i'll stick with Eclipse for a while, before I spend considerable time on changing my IDE. Maybe I'll give it a try on my next Android project, or maybe not.

Neither

[fiend_bailey]

CMake + ninja + emacs is my goto tool set. Even for Android.

QtCreator works surprisingly well for Android, in my opinion. But it still ain't emacs.

Android Gradle is a waste of time

[Anonymous Coward]

Gradle is google saying you have too much spare time. Incompatible plugins - the google supplied plugin has literally changed twice in the last week.

Look through stack overflow, etc. The amount of productivity lost to chasing gradle is astonishing. Go ahead, write unit tests for Android in Gradle. I dare you.

Google should have put some thought to a maven plugin. Or just some thought. Introduced at last Google I/O and typical Google still in beta (and broken).

Android Studio shows some promise, but is also incomplete. Especially if you use NDK. Or build library modules. Or do real work.

If you are an early adopter of shiny toys, I hope you have time on your hands.

Re: I've been using Eclipse since before it was Ec

[cerberusss]

Heh yeah I tried installing that on my Mac. Intelli-J even offers a nice installation as a plugin. First, it simply didn't start and it turns out that the plugin installation will install an old version. Okay then I'll download it manually. That installed a kernel driver which crashed my OSX laptop.

I gave up and continued using the dog slow emulator.

Re:I've been using Eclipse since before it was Ecl

[TheSunborn]

Which is why you should use the x86(intel atom) version instead of the arm version. It is much much much faster. Once you have downloaded the atom version, you can choose between arm and intel when creating a new emulator.

Why Google have chosen "download arm only" as the default, I really don't understand. But this is a case studio in "Defaults matter".

IDEA

[Lawrence_Bird]

I have been using IDEA Community 13 so not the Google specific package for Android devel work. As someone who had never used an IDEA of this level of sophistication, I found an initial week trial run of both IDEA and Eclipse left me favoring IDEA and have not looked back. I did briefly toy with Netbeans which seems a nice environment but was lacking in android focus so I did not put effort into exploring it more fully.

Also, while I can't speak for the Eclipse community, the IDEA support and bug community have been very responsive.

Re:IDEA

[master_kaos]

I have been using PHPStorm for years (from same company as IDEA) so I might be slightly biased, but when I started Android Develpment I used Eclipse for some reason becasue it seemed like the defacto standard for android development. I used it for a month and was incredibly frustrated. Eclipse seemed like something from 10 years ago, not a modern IDE, it was also running incredibly slow on my machine with a project that contained thousands of files. I then switched to Idea Community 12 and was more productive after 3 days than I was with eclipse after a month, although fair enough that my previous experience with PHPStorm helped a lot but even then their ide is simplier yet more powerful than eclipse.

Re:I've been using Eclipse since before it was Ecl

[Lawrence_Bird]

are you using the Intel HAXM speed up? Emulator on intel hardware should be more than usable.

NDK support

[musikit]

Neither support debugging with NDK.
android has absolutely 0 support for it.
some people have apparently gotten NDK debugging working in eclipse. i've tried every example on the web and have been unsuccessful in ever getting ndk debugging working. maybe oneday google will realize ndk support is worth a damn.

Ed is the Standard Editor

[flyingfsck]

Vi, bah, you kids...

NEITHER

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn the language first .... then worry about the IDE.

Re: I've been using Eclipse since before it was Ec

[angel'o'sphere]

Your Java based IDE ... called IDEA (the company) IntelliJ (the product) installed a "kernel driver" (what ever that is supposed to mean) on Mac OS X on your Laptop?

Sorry, that idea is completely retarded.

Eclipse is terrible.

[scorp1us]

I'm on a core i5 at work, and the CPU is damn fast, but the entire Eclipse UI is slow. Closing a tab takes a noticeable amount of time, even for files that fit on the screen. And my biggest complaint is that somehow this glorified text editor is capable of halting my machine when it tries to auto-complete. How a Java app can do that is beyond me.

Then when I first start it up, it complains that my project has "problems". It's just not done loading it yet. Refesh, its gone.

I have yet to like any java app or servlet. The GU library is ugly and slow. I like the language well enough, but anything done is java is just terrible.

Re:Eclipse is terrible.

[Kuberz]

get a solid state disk

Re:Eclipse is terrible.

[scorp1us]

I have one at home. But not at work. I don't see how that helps. As a matter of fact, I think it would make it worse.

Re:Eclipse is terrible.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unbelievable, how are you even a developer?

Miles beyond Eclipse

[Anonymous Coward]

Eclipse is well architected and tries to be the end-all be-all solution. JetBrains bothers to focus on some configuration management and cuts numerous releases. The consequence is IDEs that work. Great move on Google's part.

Tried to switch...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've tried out pretty much every release of Android Studio so far, but every time I'm stopped by the fact that IDEA doesn't (correctly) support remapped home directories on Windows. Have a home directory or a project living on a UNC path? You're SOL. It baffles me that a company that makes an IDE as otherwise nice as IDEA can't get the URI api usage right after a good part of a decade.

You can configure idea to use local directories for preferences and logs, but that doesn't fly when using roaming profiles. The Android Gradle basically explodes when trying to create a new project on a machine with remote home directory, and so far no one on the tools team seems interested in fixing it. Coupled with the constant stream of buggy ADT releases (avd manager can't create avd, x86 image shipped with broken Google APIs), I'm not getting a good feeling about the future of Android tools, especially in the enterprise.

Android Studio is great but too unstable for now..

[netcyrax]

Done many projects with Android Studio and had to switch back to Eclipse. Almost every time the Android Studio updates itself, it breaks the compilation ability of your project. Nevertheless, Android Studio is way better than Eclipse and as soon as a more stable version is released i will definitely switch back!

Ant is not a build system

[Anonymous Coward]

Ant is not a build system, it is just a series of blind tasks. I real build system creates a top-down view and then executes it efficiently, only building what is needed. The only value that ant has over bash is that it runs on all platforms java supports.

huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why _wouldn't_ you want to "mess" with gradle? To create my first release build for the play store I couldn't trust what the IDE wanted to do, but I could trust a small readable Gradle script to build my first true release build and every build after that.

You can use IntelliJ directly you know

[Torp]

Even the free community edition supports Android development. No need for the Android Sudio thingy, i've been using IntelliJ for ages.
As for Eclipse, I don't think I have a computer powerful enough to run it. It's only a Core i7 with 32 Gb ram

Switching was a necessity

[Anonymous Coward]

I was a huge eclipse champion but it was so frustratingly broken for years and the trend was moving in the wrong direction that I was willing to put up version 0.35 of AS and now I'm an AS champion doing things with build variants that I could never do before.

that's old

[lkernan]

" Eclipse, on the other hand, is the granddaddy of IDEs" So Visual Studio must be the dinosaur of IDEs.

Re:I've been using Eclipse since before it was Ecl

[CastrTroy]

I've tried the x86 version, and while it is faster, it still runs slower than it does on a native phone, or it is at least much more intensive than it would be running on a native x86/atom device. I thought that Android used a VM anyway, so there should be no need to debug on an ARM emulator or even some Atom VM unless you are debugging with bugs specific to the platform.

Mu!

[Anonymous Coward]

Question presents a false dichotomy, that one or the other fits my needs. Neither does. BTW, I am an Android programmer. No IDE does anything but get between me and the code I'm writing.

Xamarin studio all the way!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do u want to develop in a 2nd rate IDE when u can have all the sweetness of C# and Xamarin studio and target all platforms at once??

'Do you agree?'

[l3v1]

Do I agree? I've been using AStudio since the first preview came out after I/O, and after using it for 5 minutes it became clear to me that I'll never go back to frustrate myself with eclipse, ever. I don't mean to offend to good people who develop eclipse, but the damn thing gave me so many headaches over the time I had to use it, that dropping it felt like recovering from a long illness, honestly. Of course, there are lots of people who like it, obviously I'm not one of them. Regarding AStudio, if you didn't try it up to now, I think it's time, since it really matured from its first preview release, and while there can be some big changes between updates causing some minor trouble, it's already pretty good, and I think it's pretty clear it'll be the best IDE for android development.

It'll take you some time to switch from eclipse though, getting used to doing things a bit differently, so don't plan to do it overnight. First I kept using eclipse for existing projects, and using AS for new ones, then at some point I moved everything to AS and never looked back.

It's so annoying...

[Anonymous Coward]

First world problems.. Eclipse is fine. Emacs is fine. Vim is fine. Just code and quit your crying. All this talk about IDE's and you could have had something compiling by now. Developers these days... cripes!