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I've used IntelliJ for previous projects, but I am definitely going to give Eclipse a spin for the next one.

The Visual Layout Editor seems like too much goodness to miss out on. Jump to 7:17 in this video for a demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq05KqjXTvs

The emulator is very slow indeed, but they talked about it at I/O and they said they will improve it this fall with hardware acceleration (they think lack of it was the biggest issue). Another smaller issue would be that the Android emulator is basically running "ARM hardware" on top of x86 (it's not just a fake simulator like the one for iOS).

They're also bringing a new UI builder this fall. They talk about all of that here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq05KqjXTvs

⬐ angry-hacker

Wow, thank you so much for that information about the new UI builder... it looks awesome. Do we have anything more specific than just "fall" about the release date?

⬐ estel

They've largely been released a month ago [1]. Some elements are still missing, however.

[1] http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2011/06/new-editing-f...

⬐ masklinn

> Another smaller issue would be that the Android emulator is basically running "ARM hardware" on top of x86

Uh... no shit? That's exactly what the "emulator" part of "ARM emulator" means.

> it's not just a fake simulator like the one for iOS

It's not a fake simulator, it's a simulator period. There's nothing fake about it.

⬐ jrbj

Why are people down-voting this parent?

The iOS Simulator is specifically refereed to as a simulator NOT an emulator. It simulates the iOS on top of OS X and makes no attempt to be an emulator. It is a decent simulator.

⬐ stonemetal

My guess is people are down voting for tone, and the fact that he didn't even read what he quoted.

⬐ masklinn

> and the fact that he didn't even read what he quoted.

Of course I did. An Android emulator can only mean Android running on top of an ARM emulator, otherwise it's a simulator (like the iOS simulator). Emulators are always about hardware unless otherwise specified.

⬐ stonemetal

An Android emulator can only mean Android running on top of an ARM emulator How so? Android supports both x86 and ARM. I would have thought x86 on x86 would be the way to go since it has been done before with good performance. Heck they wouldn't even have to write anything just ship a customized virtual box or QEmu.

⬐ vetinari

The current emulator _is_ QEmu. However, the current problem is not arm emulation, but moving pixels in software. You will notice, that the more you increase resolution, the more the performance drops.

The Google IO talk linked in this thread addresses this point, so hopefully in Autumn the emulator will be usable (especially at tablet resolutions).

⬐ stonemetal

Note what you quoted. He said Android emulator this could be emulating just the OS portion of Android with a jvm that targets x86. Instead they ship an actual ARM emulator and do not emulate Android. From what I understand of iOS development they do it the other way. They compile to x86 and emulate the iOS system calls. They don't emulate an ARM and run the real iOS on it. Therefore the Apple way is a little fake, it is possible for behavior to differ between emulated iOS and real iOS. When you run the android sim there is no possibility of stub vs real OS differences, you are always on the real OS.

edit: Basically it boils down to too little context around the words emulated vs simulated.

⬐ masklinn

> He said Android emulator this could be emulating just the OS portion of Android with a jvm that targets x86.

That's exactly what the iOS simulator does. It would not be an emulator in that case. It would be a simulator. Like the iOS simulator.

> From what I understand of iOS development they do it the other way. They compile to x86 and emulate the iOS system calls. They don't emulate an ARM and run the real iOS on it.

Hence being a simulator.

> Therefore the Apple way is a little fake, it is possible for behavior to differ between emulated iOS and real iOS.

It's not fake, it's a simulator. That's the whole point, and that's why it's called "simulator" not "emulator".

⬐ wallflower

Emulator snapshots help the initial bootup time

Run adb install and adb uninstall from a command terminal to get a little bit faster deploys.

We almost never run the debugger in Debug mode, we run it in Run mode (any runtime errors you can debug later from the stacktrace and how you got there)

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4842612/how-do-you-save-a...

So... this is tender ground to be treading (holy wars).

I am a strong believer in your tool feeling good to you; it is the environment you create in. The better it feels, the faster and more cohesively you will work (within reason).

That being said, I'm comparing Eclipse+ADT to IntelliJ. I have no opinions on alternative home-brew solutions that are a combination of editors and command line.

For Android development, you'll want the following things:

- Strong Java editor support - Strong Android UI support - Strong debugger support - Strong deployment/emulator integration - Support for whatever Android version you are targetting.

The two IDEs in all those areas are damn near similar, except...

ADT 12 just added a slew of nice, Android-specific context-sensitive content assists that are really damn nice.

In addition, ADT 12 jumped the visual layout designer forward in a big way with accurate component rendering in preview as well as support for custom components[1].

I think something worth considering is that Android support is a feature, among 100 other, that the core IntelliJ team develops, support and extends.

ADT is the official, Google-driven effort to develop and expand their Android tooling on the Eclipse platform. The ADT team isn't distracted by things like autocomplete support, classpath scanning, project formats, etc... all they do is develop Android tooling directly ontop of Eclipse.

I would expect that the ADT tools continue to be more robust and outpace competitor implementations.

I would also point out that the ADT team has some seriously fantastic developers on it; if you are the type to enjoy high level "new feature" overviews of IDEs, check out Tor Norbye and Xavier Ducrohet's presentation at Google I/O 2011 showing off a lot of the new features in ADT 12[2].

I realize up to now it has sounded like I'm an Eclipse fan, but I am just a "tools to get things done" fan.

[1] http://developer.android.com/sdk/eclipse-adt.html

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq05KqjXTvs