Android's sun sets on Eclipse

Google has decided Android Studio is all you need to make apps, and by the end of the year will no longer support the venerable but popular Eclipse IDE. Android product manager Jamal Eason has blogged that in recent years “our team has focused on improving the development experience for building Android apps with Android …

[Anonymous Coward]

Embrace, Extend...

Extinguish.

[Planty]

Re: Embrace, Extend...

I guess you haven't tried either.

Eclipse ADT was pretty horrible. Functional but that was about it. It was a sprawling resource hog.

Android Studio is better in every single way, by a massive amount. So what's been extinguished exactly? Improved beyond recognition...

[Andrew Moore]

Re: Embrace, Extend...

agreed- the Android Studio experience is 100 times better than Eclipse, even when it was in pre-beta (or is it post-alpha?)

[James 51]

Not invented here syndrome strikes again and this is just what was missing and I never knew, yet another IDE to learn.

[Charlie Clark]

Where's the NIH stuff? It's using IntelliJ instead of Eclipse.

Eclipse may have its fans but so does IntellJ and from I've seen of them both, I much prefer IntelliJ.

[getHandle]

IntelliJ

It does appear to be a _bit_ less of a dog's dinner than Eclipse. Those Eclipse right-click context menus that go off the bottom of the screen still scare me!

[Steve Crook]

Re: IntelliJ

Been using Intellij for years. Always thought it was the dogs nuts. So much so I was happy to pay for my own version rather than use the free Eclipse. Always thought Eclipse sucked and I *never* found a developer who'd used both and preferred Eclipse.

[t.s.maeder]

Re: IntelliJ

Having use Webstorm for the last half year, I still much prefer Eclipse. It's generally faster and more stable (unless you make it crap with stupid plugins). I find IntelliJ-Based products much over-hyped. I have the strong suspicion it's for people who never liked IDE's anyway.

Also, Eclipse doesn't hang itself twice a day. I'm sorry that the guys at Google couldn't be arsed to write a decent Android IDE based on Eclipse, probably the people who could have helped them do that didn't pass their stupid entrance exam.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can avoid to learn Eclipse, it's an IDE *less* to learn...

[nemesys571]

Still not invented here

From Google's point of view, IntelliJ IDEA wasn't "invented here" either. They went from creating plugins for an off-the-shelf IDE to customizing/extending an off-the-shelf IDE.

[Khaptain]

I have been learning/using Android Studio for the past week or so and I am actually quite happy to return to using a dedicated tool. Android Studio has some nice features which are agreeable to have , for example : automatic library imports, easy to setup emulators... One point to make, there are other Emulators which can be used, I believe that most popular, and also the one I now use, is GenyMotion which I find to be much faster than the inbuilt one... ymmv..

For the moment things are looking good, hopefully they will remain that way.

I have and still enjoy using Eclipse and will continue to do so for Web projects.

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't Genymotion use x86 for its VMs? (VDs?). You can set your inbuilt AVDs to use x86 as well and then it's also very fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good riddance.

I hated <pause> Android <pause> development because <pause> of Eclipse <rebuild library>.

[James 51]

Re: Good riddance.

There is an option to turn auto builds off.

[ThomH]

Eclipse is part of what has rendered me so cynical

Nowadays if I see something described as:

• portable;

• highly configurable; and

• based on a plugin architecture.

I immediately think: oh, so it's a  tedious usability mess, doing basically nothing to fit in with <your OS here>?

Thanks, Eclipse.

[t.s.maeder]

Re: Eclipse is part of what has rendered me so cynical

Would you care to support your opinion with facts or are you just spouting?

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Eclipse is part of what has rendered me so cynical

Would you care to support your opinion with facts or are you just spouting?

IDEs tend to elicit strong opinions – see any vi versus emacs debate.

My own main development is mainly in Python. I've tried Eclipse with the PyDev plugin and, like Thom, completely failed to understand it and moved on to something else. This might be the plug-in, it could be my incompetence. Doesn't really matter. Having had to help someone else setup a Windows machine I know how frustrating this can be and how such impressions colour our judgement. Having said that, sitting next to me was someone happily using Eclipse on Mac.

I've also tried PyCharm, which I believe is based on IntelliJ, and while it's got that usual, "unusual" Java look and feel I could get projects set up and run tests. I managed to disable some of the most annoying default settings so I can get it to work. However, I find I spend most of my time either in a dedicated (and paid for) Python IDE called WingIDE or one of a number of text editors with better support for other syntax and tools.

Of the novices I've come across I'd say that most that use an IDE prefer IntelliJ over Eclipse. I suspect this is due to things like those I mentioned above and an apparently lack of QA around plugins. IntelliJ has the Apple advantage of being able to decide what goes in and what doesn't. And I think Google felt the same about the studio.

[ganymede io device]

development tool user stories

http://www.ihateeclipse.com/

[Gene Cash]

They both suck

Android Studio sucks galaxies through a millipore filter, but it sucks less than Eclipse.

My major problem with Android Studio is it really wants an always-on Internet connection, and as my company firewall doesn't let it through, it'll throw hissy fits. Yes, it's got a "work w/o internet" checkbox in the preferences, but it still craps out looking for things on the internet a lot.

[Someone Else]

Warning: Marketspeak Alert!!

Android product manager Jamal Eason has blogged that in recent years “our team has focused on improving the development experience for building Android apps with Android Studio”, and it's now time to move on. [Emphasis added]

When you see phrases like the italicized one above, you should be afraid, very afraid.

No man's life, liberty or property (or, apparently, text editor) is safe when Marketing is in session. (Apologies to both Gideon Tucker and Mark Twain.)

[Anonymous Coward]

Shoud't they have waited until it's ready?

"Android studio is in development" is old news.

Reading the news title I was thinking that now it is ready, only to find out that there are still a lot of things to be done.

Before throwing out something that works, shouldn't they wait until they have something to replace it with?