SDK - Good and Bad??

[andy_metia]

Looking through the threads I'm struggling to see the key positive and negative points to let my developers know to look out for? Can you let me know the best point of the SDK and the absolute worst point which would be the first thing you would change?

[ickyfehmleh]

Good: one gets to develop in a familiar, Java-like language (technically it's not Java because it doesn't run in a normal Java VM). The content providers are invaluable; one need not worry about how eg contacts are physically stored, one can just get them from a provider. Developers can reuse pieces of other applications without having hard references to them via Intents. Developers can decouple parts of their applications by way of onActivityResult() and setResult().

Bad: coming from a NeXT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT) background I've been spoiled by InterfaceBuilder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_Builder). The Android Eclipse plugin's UI builder, while somewhat neat and handy, falls far, far short of IB. Google decided that normal JavaDocs weren't good enough for them so they made things look different. Google decided that a normal J2ME VM wasn't good enough for them so they used the DalvikVM, which may end up forking Java.

[Scythe]

Pretty easy to use and uses Java. Documentation is the hardest part to get information on, but it's rapidly growing so it's not that big of an issue (it's about equal in difficulty for iPhone development). All the built in URI's you can use makes whipping up apps quick, which is handy. Coming from a Java background in which I've used things like Swing and SWT, the interface builder is a godsend. It's not on par with Apple's Interface Builder though.

The pitfalls: Poor documentation which leads to lengthy Google search's.

Basically about it. I'd recommend reading a few chapters of Hello, Android to get a gist.