Android development IDE

mercurial

mercurial

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I've been using Eclipse, as I am learning Android development, but I've heard of other, better IDEs. IntelliJ comes to mind. Are there any other IDEs that are good for Android development? I am coding with Java (haven't touched C# in years). I've heard of Netbeans as well. Are there any others?
 
Eclipse is the one Google supports with all the nice plug-ins etc, so as far as I know, unless you like to do lots of stuff manually, you should probably go with that.
 
gkm said:
Eclipse is the one Google supports with all the nice plug-ins etc, so as far as I know, unless you like to do lots of stuff manually, you should probably go with that.
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I don't mind using it but I've read of a lot of people that say it is a crap IDE compared to the others out there.
 
Yes, Eclipse has its moment, but I still think it is the best option for Java based Android development.
 
mercurial said:
Cool. Have you used any others?



Thanks, but it seems then I would need to code in C/C++? I want to stick to Java for now :p I'm sure you've used a few in your line of work? What would you advise?
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Unfortunately if you wanna stick to Java Eclipse is the best you going to get, not because others are not better or that, its just all the plug-ins modules and add-ons you will find will be for eclipse.

PS I hate eclipse with a passion, but have no choice other than to use it. Also busy learning Phonegap (Again using eclipse as an IDE)
 
Elimentals said:
Unfortunately if you wanna stick to Java Eclipse is the best you going to get, not because others are not better or that, its just all the plug-ins modules and add-ons you will find will be for eclipse.

PS I hate eclipse with a passion, but have no choice other than to use it. Also busy learning Phonegap (Again using eclipse as an IDE)
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Okay, cool, thanks :)
 
mercurial said:
Okay, cool, thanks. Do you use it?
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Yes, I do. The Eclipse plugins Google provides makes a lot of things easier.

While I know C++ well, the Android C++ NDK is bit more hard core that I feel like going, so I am stinking with Eclipse and Java for the moment for Android dev. Unless you have a good reason to do something different, Eclipse and Java is what I would recommend for Android development. Maybe at least start that way, then you can move later.
 
http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/

I cannot stand Eclipse. The killer for me was on opening one of my projects it went into a spin and created a recursive list of sub folders that just went on forever. I stuck with its crapiness until this point.

Jet brains just works. Coming from a Visual Studio background it feels more natural too.

Just another option...
 
Mike Smit said:
http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/

I cannot stand Eclipse. The killer for me was on opening one of my projects it went into a spin and created a recursive list of sub folders that just went on forever. I stuck with its crapiness until this point.

Jet brains just works. Coming from a Visual Studio background it feels more natural too.

Just another option...
Click to expand...

I was looking at that one as well. Thanks :)
 
Elimentals said:
Unfortunately if you wanna stick to Java Eclipse is the best you going to get, not because others are not better or that, its just all the plug-ins modules and add-ons you will find will be for eclipse.

PS I hate eclipse with a passion, but have no choice other than to use it. Also busy learning Phonegap (Again using eclipse as an IDE)
Click to expand...
Agree unfortunately if you want to avoid issues and want an environment integrated with the emulator , then you must stay with eclipse (Google's preferred IDE)... In time you'll get used to it's particular brand of quirkiness (otherwise known as irritating crap) ;)
Mike Smit said:
http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/

I cannot stand Eclipse. ...
Jet brains just works. Coming from a Visual Studio background it feels more natural too...
Click to expand...
Never tried jetbrains... thanks will be happy for any improvement.

/runs off to download a copy.
 
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Elimentals said:
Also busy learning Phonegap
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Be careful of the memory management and unexplained crashes on this; a colleague of mine wasted a lot of time trying to stabilize a medium size app using this; in the end we reverted back to native coding.

If you haven't surfed their defect logs I suggest you first do this before potentially wasting time with a product that could be superficially great only... And a huge pain in the arse when you develop anything substantial...
 
[)roi(];8132222 said:
Be careful of the memory management and unexplained crashes on this; a colleague of mine wasted a lot of time trying to stabilize a medium size app using this; in the end we reverted back to native coding.

If you haven't surfed their defect logs I suggest you first do this before potentially wasting time with a product that could be superficially great only... And a huge pain in the arse when you develop anything substantial...
Click to expand...

Agreed. PhoneGap claim some nice production grade apps and the cross platform aspect is very compelling, but I also wonder for serious stuff that needs deeper phone integration. It is however a very interesting option for rapid prototypes and applications that mainly view information.
 
PhoneGap ultimately lets you create a webpage that happens to be installed on the phone. There are some APIs and for a lot of apps it could very well be sufficient. One of the apps I wrote I am considering moving over to phone gap because it is so simple and it would be an interesting experiment.

One the other hand, if you are planning to develop any sort of game or editing app, I certainly would not recommend phonegap
 
Eclipse is becoming a reality... even us embedded people are being forced to use it
 
Koosi said:
Eclipse is becoming a reality... even us embedded people are being forced to use it
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It's the pricing that makes it so popular :D I wasn't a fan when I started using Eclipse, but now that I have been using it for 2 years I really prefer it a lot over things like Visual Studio
 
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