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First look: Android Studio eclipses Eclipse
Android Studio pairs IntelliJ IDEA with rich layout and Gradle builds
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Adopting the tool requires a bit of relearning if you're coming to it from Eclipse. Not only are some of the buttons in different places, but Android Studio is heavily integrated with Gradle, the latest build tool. If you're still stuck on Ant or Maven, you'll have to adjust to yet another innovative solution to building your software where everything is slightly different. From the arrangement of the files to the languages, everything has morphed a bit.
A cloudy future
Not everything is ready yet. The Web pages promise, for instance, that Gradle will make it easier to create multiple build
variants, but this won't happen until the future. I think the more flexible Gradle build system will be a welcome addition
because apps are getting more complicated. When I tested the Studio, I built three different apps that started with a very
similar code base. I used three different projects because that was simpler. This kind of work will be more common as we try
to gather together more and more parts of a project under one umbrella.
It's worth noting that Gradle is the latest baroque instantiation of a trend toward domain-specific languages that are sometimes described as "mini-languages" with just enough custom structure to handle the job. In this case, Gradle is a Groovy DSL, which means you have to shift gears to think in Groovy and shift gears again to think in Gradle. But then deep in Android Studio you're really writing Java, which means you're writing and thinking in three slightly different but structurally similar languages. While I've always appreciated the idea behind DSLs, the complexity started to wear on me with Android Studio.
Alas, building an app has gotten so complex that we need a Turing-complete build language, so we might as well use the latest and greatest build tools -- today that may be Gradle. Only a tired, old Java hand would want to keep typing out all of those semicolons just to be consistent. The good news is that the cloud-based tools such as Hudson and Jenkins are embracing Gradle, so we can expect more and more projects to use it.
Android Studio lets you quickly view your layout on a number of Google's devices simultaneously.
The most interesting part of Android Studio may be the promises of what's to come. The website makes it clear it's an "early access preview," which must be the term that's come to replace the devalued "beta." I didn't run into any serious problems or any issues building a few basic apps, but I did notice a few places where the documentation would blend into the documentation for using Eclipse. One minute I was clicking on something for Android Studio, and the next minute I was in Eclipse land.
The promises for the future and the hints for what's around the corner are sprinkled throughout the Web pages. They highlight the way that Gradle will grow more powerful and better integrated with the cloud. Google is already talking about adding more features to the Android publishing environment. You can, for instance, quickly translate your app using Google's cloud so that it's ready for foreign markets. Android Studio won't be a lone cowboy standing by itself on a desktop, but will have plenty of support from Google's cloud.
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