Home Features Current 10 things every Android developer needs to know - 2. An IDE
10 things every Android developer needs to know - 2. An IDE
Written by Carl Whalley   
Friday, 20 November 2009 09:00
Article Index
10 things every Android developer needs to know
1. Support
2. An IDE
3. Java
4. Graphic design
5. XML layouts
6. The Market
2. An IDE
8. OS Versions
9. The App Lifecycle
10. DDMS
All Pages

2. An IDE

Its all visual now.

The SDK certainly doesn't mandate any particular IDE, in fact it goes out of its way to show you how to develop Android apps without one. This isn't just for diehard console jockeys by the way; as your projects get bigger and more complex, automated build and test tools become more necessary. However, for the majority of Android developers an IDE is pretty much essential.

Now for some flamebait - which one? Eclipse is the one which seems to have the largest number of users, and if you read between the lines and watch the Google training videos you'll get the impression it's the favoured one by them too, but I'm sure that's something they will remain impartial about. The point here is you need one, and if you are familiar with any of the biggies you'll find it will work the way you are used to anyway. Here are the main contenders:

The current version of Idea is commercial, but the older ones are free and they recently announced a free edition is forthcoming - check here for more info.



 

Comments  

 
0 #5 cousinHub 2009-12-10 06:54
I liked this part in part 8 (OS versions):

Android releases are named after desserts, so we had Cupcake (1.5), Donut (1.6) and Eclair (2.0), the next two are rumoured to be Flan and Gateaux - in case you hadn't spotted it, there's an alphabetic progression there
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0 #4 Robert Lilly 2009-12-09 16:26
Awesome article. Now I'm really glad I learned to develop on Android for my augmented reality app instead of some other mobile system. And today I'm going to an interview for an Android developer position.
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0 #3 Matt Kanninen 2009-12-04 01:32
Preach it brother!
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0 #2 André 2009-11-24 06:31
Thanks for this article :) I'm sure this will help a lot of Android fans to start their own little project.

For graphics I'm a fan of Inkscape now. It's an awesome piece of software. Especially for doing games and similar stuff. All graphics of my own game Puzzle Blox have been created with Inkscape. Thumbs up!
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+2 #1 Jeff Watson 2009-11-20 22:10
Great article. I found item #8 Dalvik Debug Monitor Server very useful!
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