Anyone into Android programming?

[emjay]

I've done a bit of Android programming (but nothing professional and nothing on Google Play) and just wondered if anyone else has and what their experiences of it are?

I find it really hard going, unintuitive, and not much fun at all - but it is the wave of the future I guess so still worth pursuing. Does anyone actually enjoy it?

There's just so much to learn and every time you do learn something new it doesn't help with learning anything else, so in other words nothing seems interrelated and therefore the whole thing just feels impossible to master... I feel like a perpetual newbie and end up spending most of my time on Stack Overflow asking questions.

And unlike the usual case with programming I think the hardest part of Android development is actually creating a UI (whereas in say VB.Net that part is essentially just drag and drop). You think something like a listview should be the easiest thing in the world but it takes a lot of learning to customise it in even the simplest and most common ways (such as checkboxes, changing colours, and group headings) - and it's like that with every single UI element... and don't get me started on fragments

I guess I'm just wondering if it gets easier with time and if there is ever a point when it truly clicks and you just 'get it' and thereafter don't have to spend all your time asking questions and can actually make intuitive assumptions?

Anyway it's been a while since I last worked on it. I have Linux, Eclipse (I know Eclipse is no longer Google's IDE of choice but it's all my little netbook can handle and in any case all that's available for my distro of Linux) and a half-finished app on my phone (which granted does a good job at what it does but lacks a decent UI). The question is, is it worth rekindling that interest?

[Napoléon]

I feel your pain. I did some Android programming a while ago but as soon as I got my code working he kept raving about "Starfleet" and "The Federation" which was certainly not my intention. Ended up having to give him away to some bald bloke who looked suspiciously like Patrick Stewart.

[bennyboy]

I've done a bit of Android programming (but nothing professional and nothing on Google Play) and just wondered if anyone else has and what their experiences of it are?

I find it really hard going, unintuitive, and not much fun at all - but it is the wave of the future I guess so still worth pursuing. Does anyone actually enjoy it?

There's just so much to learn and every time you do learn something new it doesn't help with learning anything else, so in other words nothing seems interrelated and therefore the whole thing just feels impossible to master... I feel like a perpetual newbie and end up spending most of my time on Stack Overflow asking questions.

And unlike the usual case with programming I think the hardest part of Android development is actually creating a UI (whereas in say VB.Net that part is essentially just drag and drop). You think something like a listview should be the easiest thing in the world but it takes a lot of learning to customise it in even the simplest and most common ways (such as checkboxes, changing colours, and group headings) - and it's like that with every single UI element... and don't get me started on fragments  

I guess I'm just wondering if it gets easier with time and if there is ever a point when it truly clicks and you just 'get it' and thereafter don't have to spend all your time asking questions and can actually make intuitive assumptions?

Anyway it's been a while since I last worked on it. I have Linux, Eclipse (I know Eclipse is no longer Google's IDE of choice but it's all my little netbook can handle and in any case all that's available for my distro of Linux) and a half-finished app on my phone (which granted does a good job at what it does but lacks a decent UI). The question is, is it worth rekindling that interest?

My experience with Android apps right now is using Webview to integrate Android with a webpage-- specifically, to record live sound, convert it to .mp3 and upload it to the webpage.  It's pretty neat that you can use javascript on a normal webpage to call Android methods.  I was also relieved to see that Java really is so close to C# that I could just jump right in and start coding.

That being said, the Android application architecture, like you said especially fragments, is kind of perplexing for someone coming from Windows programming.  But I think if you follow all the protocols and program like a good little boy, then it'll be nice how smoothly things run along.

Here's an idea: if you don't need access to Android-specific functions, like the camera or the file system, you could use Unity3d.  This is a game-design framework, but it has good built-in UI, all the scripting is in C#, and your app will port to almost anything with little or no modification: Android, Windows, iOS, etc.

But either way, I'd say of course Android is worth the investment.  It's arguably more important than Windows, and is almost for sure a better platform for making money with a one-man or small-team programming project.  I'm in the process of putting on app on Google Play right now, but based on what I've read, it looks extremely easy to do.

[AFTT47]

Unity looks very interesting.

[emjay]

I've done a bit of Android programming (but nothing professional and nothing on Google Play) and just wondered if anyone else has and what their experiences of it are?

I find it really hard going, unintuitive, and not much fun at all - but it is the wave of the future I guess so still worth pursuing. Does anyone actually enjoy it?

There's just so much to learn and every time you do learn something new it doesn't help with learning anything else, so in other words nothing seems interrelated and therefore the whole thing just feels impossible to master... I feel like a perpetual newbie and end up spending most of my time on Stack Overflow asking questions.

And unlike the usual case with programming I think the hardest part of Android development is actually creating a UI (whereas in say VB.Net that part is essentially just drag and drop). You think something like a listview should be the easiest thing in the world but it takes a lot of learning to customise it in even the simplest and most common ways (such as checkboxes, changing colours, and group headings) - and it's like that with every single UI element... and don't get me started on fragments  

I guess I'm just wondering if it gets easier with time and if there is ever a point when it truly clicks and you just 'get it' and thereafter don't have to spend all your time asking questions and can actually make intuitive assumptions?

Anyway it's been a while since I last worked on it. I have Linux, Eclipse (I know Eclipse is no longer Google's IDE of choice but it's all my little netbook can handle and in any case all that's available for my distro of Linux) and a half-finished app on my phone (which granted does a good job at what it does but lacks a decent UI). The question is, is it worth rekindling that interest?

My experience with Android apps right now is using Webview to integrate Android with a webpage-- specifically, to record live sound, convert it to .mp3 and upload it to the webpage.  It's pretty neat that you can use javascript on a normal webpage to call Android methods.  I was also relieved to see that Java really is so close to C# that I could just jump right in and start coding.

That being said, the Android application architecture, like you said especially fragments, is kind of perplexing for someone coming from Windows programming.  But I think if you follow all the protocols and program like a good little boy, then it'll be nice how smoothly things run along.

Here's an idea: if you don't need access to Android-specific functions, like the camera or the file system, you could use Unity3d.  This is a game-design framework, but it has good built-in UI, all the scripting is in C#, and your app will port to almost anything with little or no modification: Android, Windows, iOS, etc.

But either way, I'd say of course Android is worth the investment.  It's arguably more important than Windows, and is almost for sure a better platform for making money with a one-man or small-team programming project.  I'm in the process of putting on app on Google Play right now, but based on what I've read, it looks extremely easy to do.

Thanks benny problem with me is I'm always a bit behind the times so I had no idea that you could use android methods from within a Web page, but it's not for me anyway cos Web development was never my strong suit (except php which is pretty cool). I was new to Java as well when I started android programming. I think it's a really nice language and kind of like a much simplified version of c++ (ie without pointers and stuff).

It's been a while since I last used .NET because I no longer use Windows and only Linux. It is very different mainly because you have to deal with both XML and Java and (though I think windows phone programming may be almost exactly the same - their development sites are (or were) almost identical with IMO MS ripping off Google) it just makes everything so much more laborious and unintuitive... trying to couple the two.

Thanks for the suggestion of Unity3d - I'll look into it but from the looks of it I won't have the hardware to run it (all I've got is a netbook). Do you use it? I have wondered about making games with I think it was the Canvas API but I don't know whether that would be harder or easier than using the standard ui components - or whether you'd end up having to use both?

Good luck with your app in Google play - I hope you make millions from it

Mine, even if it does end up in Google play, won't make millions because it's not in high demand (though I find it useful myself). It's a data traffic monitoring tool that provides a breakdown of traffic by app. All the internals are done - getting the traffic stats from the proc directory and dumping them in a sqlite database - but the big challenge is making the UI look good and designing the best possible queries of the data.

[Rhizomorph13]

I've used Unity3d and completed three of the tutorial apps (Rollerball, Space Shooter, and Survival Shooter) and added some code to two of them to adapt them to work on my phone using tilt control and the touch screen. I haven't made any lists but have watched some videos on working with UI canvases. They seem to work a lot like programming a VB form but with more features like alpha shifting to make your buttons translucent or clear to allow your game to show through.

Unity is probably a lot more than what you would need to get the job done, but the cool part, as Benny mentioned, is how easy it is to port your code to other platforms. Another thing you can do, that I have no experience with, is to take your java code and create a module for Unity.

I like unity because it is object based and works a bit like blender; you just put your models where you want them and add scripts and modules that work with the physics engine. I tried the java path to programming for android and it wasn't fun enough for me.

[bennyboy]

Thanks for the suggestion of Unity3d - I'll look into it but from the looks of it I won't have the hardware to run it (all I've got is a netbook). Do you use it? I have wondered about making games with I think it was the Canvas API but I don't know whether that would be harder or easier than using the standard ui components - or whether you'd end up having to use both?

I'm not sure what kind of netbook you have. I actually teach Unity at my school using crap (but reasonably new) laptops that cost about $300 new, and Unity runs totally fine on them. My guess would be that Unity will probably run fine for you, as long as you don't try to use a lot of complicated shaders or models. I recommend you just download it and play around-- the tutorials are very easy to follow, and by the time you finish two or three, as Rhizomorph13 has, you'll probably have a very good idea whether it will work for you or not.

@Rhizomorph13
I'd say Unity works a lot better than .NET forms for gaming, but not as good as XNA or a couple other options for Windows. The problem with those other platforms is the support is getting weak-- XNA for example has been officially been discontinued in favor of Unity by Microsoft.

The best thing (as you've discovered apparently) is that you can import Blender or other 3D assets, including animations, directly into Unity. Gone are the days you have to write custom import code-- researching Maya file format documents and crap like that. I've been playing with the RollABall tutorial too, and I used Maya to make a bunch of 3D objects-- like a twisted tube to roll through.

Maybe it would be fun if we put up a couple of projects. Should we make a new thread?

[Rhizomorph13]

Unity is supposed to support cloud multi-user editing, but I bet it would require the pro version and I'm not that dedicated to pay 75 dollars a month or the full 1500 to go pro.

After I plunked around with the rollerball tutorial I found that there was a fully completed ball that included a jump feature that you can use right in the unity standard character objects.

[bennyboy]

Unity is supposed to support cloud multi-user editing, but I bet it would require the pro version and I'm not that dedicated to pay 75 dollars a month or the full 1500 to go pro.

After I plunked around with the rollerball tutorial I found that there was a fully completed ball that included a jump feature that you can use right in the unity standard character objects.

I don't really see the attraction of the paid product, since there's almost nothing limiting about the free version that I've found yet.  There was something about color/texture animations, i.e. you couldn't animate them.  But I found a workaround by writing my own shaders, and animating the color properties for them, and this worked fine.  Since the regular shaders are too heavy for Android anyway, it was like "Gee, that's easy."  The same goes for the cloud stuff.  Unless I had a big team working on a high-end project, I'm fine just making a new OneDrive account and giving the password to my friends.  Cloud storage solved.

My Roll-A-Ball game now has a rolling Earth for a ball, animated space-themed tiles, and twisty slides that I modeled in Maya, and it's all been VERY easy to do.  I'm really impressed with Unity so far-- I really can't imagine an easier way to slap together a workable game.  Maybe I'll see if I can figure out how to screen cap my Android phone and throw up a little youtube vid of it.

[Rhizomorph13]

That would be cool, have you published your game on the play store? I saw a version of roll-a-ball on there that didn't sound nearly as cool. Oh, is yours tilt controlled and can you send me the .apk?

Did you know that unity has its own ad support program? Just a couple lines of code and signing up your game and viola, revenue!

No, I haven't done it; I'm working up an Adventure game that I plan on publishing for Android.