#XCODE VS ANDROID STUDIO HOW TO#
#XCODE VS ANDROID STUDIO ANDROID#
#XCODE VS ANDROID STUDIO SOFTWARE#
#XCODE VS ANDROID STUDIO CODE#

Most of all, though, albeit most selfishly, if Google’s IDE were better, it would push Apple’s to improve.

#XCODE VS ANDROID STUDIO ANDROID#

Android apps famously tend to be buggier than iOS, and it’s hard to believe that the IDE has nothing to do with that.

#XCODE VS ANDROID STUDIO SOFTWARE#

Developers comfortable in both ecosystems prefer iOS to Android because it’s easier to work with, and so we help influence much smartphone software to be iOS-first, with Android as a second-class after thought. Better tooling is one reason iOS development is faster and more efficient. It is truly remarkable that a hypermonied behemoth the size of Google decided to go this slow, kludgy, ugly route for a flagship development environment for its mobile platform with well over a billion active installs.

#XCODE VS ANDROID STUDIO CODE#

But surely Google, of all companies, has the resources to support native code on multiple platforms. It’s true that XCode only has to run on one operating system, Apple’s, whereas Android Studio must be multi-platform. (Although building is just hard Apple’s build tools don’t exactly hold your hand either.) But a better-designed IDE could at least mitigate this. It’s true that, for instance, the Gradle build tool is famously developer-hostile. It’s true that the Android ecosystem itself is clumsy and complex, fragmented into a dizzying plethora of versions of various libraries and SDKs. (Again: “Tools / Android.”) And, of course, it’s written in Java, which makes it multi-platform… but slow. It feels like fifteen-year-old software, and it’s all too apparent that it was adapted to, rather than built for, Android development. One problem, of course, is that Android Studio was not built from scratch it’s based on the long-in-the-tooth IntelliJ IDEA platform, a Java IDE… and, well, you can tell. Why does Google’s flagship Android development tool have a “Tools / Android” menu? Isn’t the whole thing an Android tool? Shouldn’t these key elements be first-class citizens? The secrets to both of these things are buried, believe it or not, in the “Android” submenu under the “Tools” menu.

#XCODE VS ANDROID STUDIO HOW TO#

Out of the box, Studio doesn’t tell me how to load any of the zillion support libraries I probably need, nor how to get Android’s (still painfully slow) emulator running. Out of the box, Studio doesn’t auto-import Java classes for me the setting for doing so is buried deep within its impenetrable labyrinth of menus. In XCode, conversely, I drag and drop with abandon and glee. I have it on good authority that I am not alone in this. I’m sure it’s theoretically possible but every time I’ve tried, I’ve gotten so frustrated that I’ve just given up and written raw XML layout files instead. And even when it fails to be helpful, it rarely actually gets in my way - something which, as far as I can tell, is Android Studio’s fundamental core competency.įor instance: I have never actually succeeded at using its visual tools to lay out elements on a screen. All my phones since have also been Android: Galaxy S2, Nexus 4, Moto X and my shiny new Pixel.īut, I also write iOS and tvOS apps and despite my abstract disapproval of Apple’s hegemonic attitude toward software, whenever I launch its IDE XCode, I breathe a little easier.

I’ve been writing Android apps, both professionally and for fun, since 2009, when I first bought an HTC Magic.

All my own smartphones have been Androids. Let me hasten to stress that I’m not an OS partisan, or, to the extent that I am, I’m inclined toward Google.

About twice a year, I get involved in a project that requires me to do some Android development so, about twice a year, I re-launch Google’s so-called integrated development environment, Android Studio, with fingers crossed… and twice a year I find myself wincing with bitter disappointment, as I rediscover that it still has all the elegant, intuitive simplicity of a Rube Goldberg machine.

Xcode vs android studio