How to develop Android applications? [closed]

Question

I used to be an Android developer for 2 years, but over 2 years ago. I believe that things changed - we have Android Studio, Gradle and probably more tools that I'm not aware of right now.

What is the current development stack for creating Android applications? What tools should we used right now? I used to use eclipse with ant, but as far as I can see, a lot of people are using AS with Gradle, which is, for my first experience, extremely slow.

How to jump back into Android development after some time of not being up to date with development stack?

Answer 1

Eclipse vs Android Studio is a matter of choice. You can get used to it within hours, or you can continue with Eclipse. I am using both tools for different projects.

• Android Studio seemed to be more stabile at some points.
• Update on Android SDK and third party libraries are more easily handled with Android Studio.
• Android Studio has not NDK support yet. You have to compile native codes outside of Android Studio. Edit:(Well, actually it has support but claimed to be deprecated, probably developers are working on a better solution) Edit2:(It will be soon officially supported with C/C++ debugger)
• With Android Studio you can use java7 syntax, but you have to stick with java6 syntax on Eclipse. Edit:(you can now force java8 with a plugin on A.S and I guess java7 is usable on eclipse too) Edit2:(java7 is a must now for both parties, but still java8 syntax can only be used in A.S with a help of plugin)
• Google releases example codes compatible with Android Studio saying eclipse versions will be available soon.
• Android Studio has better GUI designer.
• Android Studio has better refactoring capabilities.

The most important change is SDK itself, actually. Just check if Android Studio is good enough for you and study on SDK.

Answer 2

It depends on your project. For non critical or hobby projects you should definitely start with AS and Gradle right away because this the the future of Android development. Although it is still in 'beta' and it can break some stuff after a new upgrade, it has many new features which make you more productive and happier in development.

If you have a critical project and you don't want to spend your time with checking and fixing things your are not supposed to fix, you should stick back to Eclipse, at least until AS is released.

Independently on whether you use AS or Eclipse, you should already start learning and using Gradle. It works perfectly for both options. If you hesitate you can even keep Ant and Gradle building your project in parallel. They work together and don't overlap.