Android Question Android Studio

[andrewtheart]

Hi all,

Been a long time Basic4Android user.

However, just discovered Android Studio (from Google) http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html

I have not had a chance to pay around with it, but it claims the following

• Gradle-based build support.
• Android-specific refactoring and quick fixes.
• Lint tools to catch performance, usability, version compatibility and other problems.
• ProGuard and app-signing capabilities.
• Template-based wizards to create common Android designs and components.
• A rich layout editor that allows you to drag-and-drop UI components, preview layouts on multiple screen configurations, and much more.
• Built-in support for Google Cloud Platform, making it easy to integrate Google Cloud Messaging and App Engine as server-side components.

General question: Has anyone tried using this tool and gone back to B4A?

What makes b4a stand out from this

Thanks

 

[NJDude]

Android Studio is a "replacement" for Eclipse, which means, if you want to use it you need to know Java (same as using Eclipse).

 

[GiulioVale]

Try to make the same app and you can see the difference in time also after month of study the Android Studio.
B4A is really a productive tool.

 

[thedesolatesoul]

At the moment I think its still behind eclipse.

 

[Informatix]

Since it exists Eclipse ADT which is a special bundle for Android developers, with all the Eclipse features, I don't really understand the interest of Android Studio.

 

[Informatix]

Try to make the same app and you can see the difference in time also after month of study the Android Studio.
B4A is really a productive tool.

I agree. B4A has a very simple IDE compared to the IDE of Eclipse ADT, its designer is far behind, and you feel limited because of the missing parts of the Android and Java API, but in the end it is obvious for me that you're more productive with it. Many things are already done for you. And my code is more readable. I really enjoy working with it.

 

[Erel]

B4A designer together with the wysiwyg designer, abstract designer, designer script (with AutoScale) and UI cloud are quite powerful and provide good facilities to build flexible layouts.

I agree that the Eclipse graphical layout tool looks better and includes more options. However I find it to be more difficult to precisely set the layout and make it flexible.

Anyway, the B4A designer will be updated in one of the next versions.

 

[Informatix]

However I find it to be more difficult to precisely set the layout and make it flexible.

I don't understand the first argument because, to my opinion, it's exactly the contrary (there are many features of the ADT designer completely absent from the current B4A designer and one of them is very important to set precisely a layout: alignment of views on other views) but I agree with the second. The designer script is a very useful feature.
And I have no doubt that you're committed to constantly improve your product.

 

[Erel]

I don't understand the first argument because it's exactly the contrary to my opinion

I probably misread your post.
BTW, now that v3.00 is soon to be released it is a good time to post suggestions related to B4A visual designer (in the wishlist forum). As I wrote, I plan to improve the designer in the next version (most probably).

 

[Informatix]

Maybe I'm not very clear in my post but to be brief: I love B4A despite its flaws. And to answer precisely to the first question: no, I'm not going to use Java and Eclipse instead.

 

[bsnqt]

B4A designer together with the wysiwyg designer, abstract designer, designer script (with AutoScale) and UI cloud are quite powerful and provide good facilities to build flexible layouts.

I agree that the Eclipse graphical layout tool looks better and includes more options. However I find it to be more difficult to precisely set the layout and make it flexible.

Anyway, the B4A designer will be updated in one of the next versions.

I understand well that here is not a wish sub-forum however it is related... I do believe one of the most important features is to be able to see the index of Views directly in B4A Designer... that currently we don't have and that I used to work with in the .Net time for Windows Mobile. It is quite time saving feature especially when you work on layout with many views. Please if possible (and if feasible) add this feature to the next release.

In general, I have to say that I love B4A and enjoy working with it, once again (I remember that I repeated the same already for many times ), despite of some minor limitations so far. But you can look at Windows. You have many versions of Windows released before it can be nearly perfect (Windows 3.11, Windows 95, Windows 2000, Windows blah blah blah...) and it takes you more than 20 years with hundreds of people working on it, having spent millions of dollars. And now, we still have to receive the patch and update files with Windows 7, 8 etc. Improvements need time and resources...

I see the B4A future is very promising. I guess one beautiful day Google will try to buy B4A in order to integrate it to Eclipse
Why not? Everything may be possible.

 

[fabio.guerrazzi]

I see the B4A future is very promising. I guess one beautiful day Google will try to buy B4A in order to integrate it to Eclipse
Why not? Everything may be possible.

yeah, that would be the game over for us.

want to code apps using basic?
good, first infect your machine with ecliplse )

me (and billions of peoples like me) have hard disks full of *.BAS files useless because mother Microsoft dismissed VB6. Now that we have a chance to reuse some of that old knoweledge with new technologies came a Google or Oracle to acquire our game dreams.
Please, don't tell them about the existing of B4A

This is one of the best genial ideas I've seen to date, let java developers broke their brains fighting with eclipse doing nothing and let us introduce new products, ideas, inventions quick and easily on the net.

 

[tagwato]

It's now 2016: Google recently released a stable version of Android Studio 2.0.
It has a very importante new feature: "InstantRun".
Fast emulator is amazing (especially on Windows, with Intel Haxm).
Also, Android has now the very useful "PercentLayout" component and other new features that can be used in replacement of B4A 'AutoScale'.
I've played a while with Android and Studio 2.0 and it really impressed me.
I also managed to port an app from B4A to Android Studio with less effort than I thought it would take.
Well, I have enjoyed B4A productivity so far, but it seems to me that the differences between these IDE's are converging to just one: the programming language.

Just thinking...

 

[juanmpuertas]

With B4A we can use the Java librarys?
If yes, B4A is my election.

 

[JohnC]

B4A is very mature now. With it's ability to include inline Java and wrappers for Java libs, there doesn't seem to be much you can do in AS 2.0 that you can't in B4A.

But, with B4A you get much easier to read code and faster development, not to mention the ability to share a lot of code with B4I for iOS development....how is AS 2.0 with that?

 

[Rody Davis]

Now you can use Kotlin as an official language. Which is very similar to swift on iOS.

https://kotlinlang.org/docs/tutorials/kotlin-android.html

 

[miker2069]

Now you can use Kotlin as an official language. Which is very similar to swift on iOS.

https://kotlinlang.org/docs/tutorials/kotlin-android.html

I'll be honest, I don't get the appeal of Kotlin. I'm reading Android devs are going ga-ga over it but I don't see the point. I guess if you're totally brand new to Android development, possibly the learning curve is less steep. I have the same thoughts about swift.

 

[wonder]

With B4A we can use the Java librarys?

Yes, it does support Java libraries, which in turn (through JNI) allows you to use C/C++ based libs as well.
I'm currently working on a JNI-based Python library and the proof-of-concept is already available! So yeah, you can add that one as well.

 

[Rody Davis]

I come from iOS Development with Swift so it is really appealing to me in how similar they are.