Sergey Brin descends from Mount Sinai with Android API If there's one thing that's never affected by economic downturn, it's the mobile handset market. This phenomenon is most evident at the underground parties and dive bars in San Francisco, where it is a well known yet unspoken tradition that in any given group of hipsters, the one with the cheapest phone must always buy the first …
As a developer I'm embarassed for you.
Really, what do you expect of an API - for it to be so trivial that Windows developers can pick it up in 5 minutes? Put some effort in for Gods sake and stop whining, or just go back to Windows... the issue here is not API more PEBKAC.
So Google have released a free, open source SDK so far superior to MIDP that it's not comparable, got it onto a reasonable priced device in a reasonable amount of time and got that out onto the shelves. They're using a popular, powerful, concise language, with no legal restrictions.
They have provided great docs, given us Eclipse to develop in (which is incidentally the greatest IDE ever, didn't El Reg review it recently and loved it?), provided several good samples including one rather fun sounding one written by the company CEO, all the while being open and responsive to the community. There are no stupid Applesque licensing issues, no usage restrictions to speak of, no picky App store, no expensive certification process.
You then spend thirty seconds reading Apple fanboy blogs and discover (much to our surprise) that you're not only the formost authority on all of the above, but a fucking funny guy as well.
Perhaps you might spend more than four minutes with the product. Perhaps if you didn't approach a brand new SDK, for a new OS, designed to run on a new device like it was VB6 then you might not get so cross when you, through nobodies fault but your own, fail to grasp it.
As it is you seemed to have had a little tantrum and spent longer writing the article denouncing it, then you did reviewing the actual product.
Strangly enough, I've just taken a half hour to look at the SDK, and (for example) the ways to create an application that runs background are well documented, the first reference to it on the first page you SHOULD have read (http://code.google.com/android/intro/lifecycle.html)
This article teaches us very little about the SDK, but a whole lot about your skills as a writer and programmer.
Before I get accused of the same kind of Zealotry, but merely pro-Google, I will remind those that care that I am a professional C# programmer, and as such carry no prejudice toward any language/company. These things should be judged on their individual merit.
For all its profanity, I think this article is actually a pretty good representation of hobbyists views on the subject. As someone who occasionally spurns the pub in favour of tinkering with a new gadget, I absolutely identify with the "Okay bored now, show me how to make something cool" mentality. The Android documentation should focus on how to a basic task with each device or function and let developers glue it all together. Obviously not replacing the full API docs in the process though, they're just as essential.
Paris cos she knows all about the hands-on approach.
yep, ok so its a satirical piece by a 'lazy' developer and I agree that you need to put a bit of work in; but do you need to be such a pretentious knob head by having a pop at windows developers? I don't want a flame war or any other b*llsh!t but really no need for this fake snobbery sheesh
"Really, what do you expect of an API - for it to be so trivial that Windows developers can pick it up in 5 minutes?"
Spoken like an open-source jerkoff who's never spent more than five minutes in his life trying to write code to the Windows APIs. About which -- even if it is like bashing your own testicles repeatedly with a hammer, you at least have to respect the stubbornness and pain tolerance of somebody who can *do* that.
If you think that the Windows API is trivial, you've clearly never tried to code against it.
And if you think that developers should be made to jump through cock size defining hoops by APIs in order to prove their metal, then you're a dickhead. Coding prowess in the face of some unholy turdspurt of a poorly written API is just fine, for hobbyists and spotty teenagers with nothing better to do with their time and everything to prove, professionals like productivity. It pays the bills.
Stupid fucking freetard.
an angry diatribe written when drunk?
IME, a simple toolkit which is trivially easy to learn quickly ends up becoming restrictive and you spend more time working around its limitations than coding the app.
OTOH, a really really complex toolkit which allows you to do anything can have a very steep learning curve and take ages to write anything trivial.
Lots and lots of people have tried to come up with a good compromise, and some have been successful (QT from Trolltech), others failed or stayed in their niche markets.
so Google come out with something that's almost on par with what Windows Mobile has been offering for years and all of a sudden the world is caught up in the hype.
Woot.
At least they've not got a locked down application store like Apple, but apart from that what's this offering that WM6 has on 18m+ shipping devices a year?
Actually I spent quite some time programming the Windows API pre Windows 3.0, pre-MFC, pre all the Windows RAD environments, religously going through Charles Petzold books etc. circa 1989.
Perhaps if you replace "Windows developers" with "VB developers" does that make it better?
No malice meant to developers who know their API backwards, but the author just comes across as a cut & paste/point & click merchant who can't be arsed to learn the basics (whether that be programming, or an API). Much like a lot of "VB coders" I've had the misfortune to work with (usually picking up their shite and making it work - times are hard).
...at the restraint Mr. Dzubia has shown in this article re: the language.
That's obviously why he had to use the S-word so often. He's showing consideration to the tarts who complained about the language before, and restricting himself to only one profanity per article.
It's almost reminiscent of British TV in the 70s: "You can have 5 bloodys for 1 tit".
Aside from that, it's an opinion delivered in a provocative vernacular. Otherwise, who'd read about Andriod?
Posted from work, hence the verbal restraint shown here...
Erm, coding against the windows API *is* trivial. It's a shitload easier than, say, X-windows or Mac System 7 coding (to name two other WIMP API development experiences I've had). And before you start claiming "I've never coded against it" or any such rubbish, I've been a commercial Windows developer for 15 years, in C, C++, and C#.
I will join in anyway.
It is trivial to create a windows based application, hundreds of thousands of apps prove this.
Unfortunatly the majority of which are pretty, crap cos they where knocked out by point & click merchants who think they are developers. same as there are very few people I would count as web developers, the majority (sadly) are web monkeys, as is shown by the huge amount of redundant crap in the web pages.
The majority of self styled Windows devleopers just string MS API calls together and sprinkle some of little of their own code throughout the app. (though it's not only MS world who are guilty of this). However to get produce something decent you actually need more than the point & click mindset that so many are inflicted with.
Yes I have coded for Windoze, with C++, Delphi and even some kludges (and user interface mockup) with VB. I even did some stuff in assembler becasue I objected to visual C producing a 1.5 meg file simply to change mac address values from Catos to IOS formats (sub 2K was a var better size).
Just my tuppence
As a San Franciscan and soon to be G1 owner, I would actually use that app. Well, even better would be if it pointed to the nearest Republican and nearest Democratic districts. Maybe add total population of the voting district as well?
I'm thinking this could be useful because, to a limited degree, political party affiliation might be a signal for what kinds of shops and services are available in the area. So as I'm driving along I5 (the big-ass freeway that runs the length of California) and I want to find an area that has "my kind" of retail, then I can pull this up and know which way to head. And which way is not so promising.
Great idea, Ted. Make it so!
Mahlen
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
