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?

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.