Comparing the iPhone and Android Development Environments

It is indeed better to have an actual device to test your apps on. And that's maybe a big point that hasn't been compared in this article: costs. For Android, you can test your applications on your device for free. No extra charge of $99 per year to get extra development options. The emulators are nice if you're just starting, but to do real development, you definitely need a real device.

 

There is also no reason to use Eclipse for Android development (if you dont want to, that  is).

The next version (10) of IntelliJ IDEA features Andorid plugin in the free community edition. You can already download the early access version.

I havent tried Eclipse for some time, but in my experience IDEA was always way ahead and much faster.

Comparing languages and IDE is a matter of personal preference, but let me ask you something... did you do your iphone development on an apple?  Did you do android development on the apple as well?

 

Because I'd love to tell you how incredibly terrible iphone development is on linux (in fact, I'd say iphone development outside of an apple is simply not worth doing), yet android is lightning fast.

Your issues with eclipse is that eclipse thought it was best to lazy load functionality, so switching from a maven pom to an android manifest for the first time loads the editors for those types of files.  If you flip back to them after the first load, you'll find it's lightning fast.

I'm surprised you didn't mention Interface Builder. I haven't done Android dev so I don't know if it has something similar. Building UIs with IB is a dream come true.

Agree!!!

However, one thing I vote iOS dev over Android is the hardware specs is one piece. For Apple you only have to test 3 models so far if you are going that far: 4, 3GS and 3G. But for Android, every hardware manufacturer may have different implementation or performance, therefore you will have to test all of them to ensure your quality.

I personally love Java and cannot agree more on your statement of Objective-C comments, I like Netbeans more than Eclipse but for IDE it's not really a big issue for me (although I agree with you for how crappy the auto-complete the Xcode is). The most important is Objective-C syntax is so counter-productive, that's the key!!!

I get your idea but I believe most of the apps are coded in C or C++ except the native function calls. No offense but please explain why it is so difficult to simply allocate memory for an object in Objective-C? I am saying the syntax itself; not the features Objective-C provides, why all these symbols?

Ruby:
g = Greeter.new("world")

Java
Thread t = new Thread();

Objective-C
id anObject = [[Rectangle alloc] init];

So how many unnecessary [[]]]][[]]] is there when you just create an Object? Plus how many &*&(*#%)@(*)($@ (not swearing :) ) are there to just declare a property, method or anything else, is there a reason for it? I thought these high level programming languages are supposed to be English-friendly where you could just read and under it? I guess it's just me :P

But for Android, every hardware manufacturer may have different implementation

That is where you are wrong. You test only on your minimal targeted platform and several different DPI's and possibly resolutions. If you want to be safe than you test targeted platform + all newer platforms.

Unless you plan to release something for Android 1.5 DPI will not be an issue(Well, if you're not a smart developer than everything and anything will be a problem...)

Testing DPI only is a problem where an application does some drawing, using surface, GL surface or overriding draw or setting component sizes in pixels...

I test resolutions only to check is at low resolutions my components are optimally placed for small screens, it never resulted in a crash due to some bug in the Android standard widgets

They put a custom "skin"(if you wish to call that). And I don't even believe you can develop widgets specialised for HTC's Sence or Motoraloa's Blur. Those skins are basically closed source, but what's underneath is same as any other Android at that API level. Those manufacturers can't get their devices access Android Market without conforming to a specific level of API. I have yet to see where a handset manufacturer has modified the base API or even the default implementation beyond H/W drivers...

And fro that list of 5 fragmentation points, I have to agree, just he puts more items into fragmentation column than he should. And those points are in general, if you apply the same critique to iPhone you get the same 5 points. Just that Android's version and DPI/resolutions fragmentation is greater.

That said, version 1.5 is still a problem for people that have custom graphics components. That is why I didn't actually even test on 1.5. But the graphics part(the one I worked on, see below) works perfectly on all resolutions and all platforms starting with 1.6.

Sorry for the plug, the app is: http://www.androlib.com/android.application.com-mystar-android-qzwij.aspx

Having just started iPhone development coming from the PC side of things I have a slightly different take. I find Xcode to be lacking. I really want tabbed editing. It works great for me and is used by a ton of other IDEs that I really miss it in Xcode. I also don't like Interface Builder being separate from Xcode. If you make changes in IB, switch to XC and forgot to save the changes in IB then do a build you are not warned you have unsaved changes. I have been bitten by that too many times. Not super happy about the keyboard shortcuts used in Xcode either, I really want HOME and END to be start and end of line. Is there a way to set that up? I agree the Android emulator is slow and it is that way because you are emulated another OS and a device on a PC. At least on the Mac you are using same base OS and just doing device emulation. iPhone wins there but Android wins when it comes to running on the device as it is so much easier to just set device to debug mode and drop your code right on it. With the iPhone you have to do the whole agree with Apple legal and get a certificate. I will have a similar fate before I release my Android app but for ease of use and programmer experimentation Android wins. Objective C is a language written as a preprocessor on C. They used the [] and @ syntax as those symbols were available to preprocess not because it was a pretty syntax. It really started as a hack to avoid writing a new compiler. At least knowing that let me cut the language some slack. I find it hard to read thus making it harder to code. I prefer Java so I prefer coding for the Android when given a choice. I also miss working in just one file in Java. I used to code C/C++ and always opening two files (h and c or cpp) to do anything seems counter productive. Opening m and h files in Objective C feels the same but at least there is a hot key to move between the two quickly. I needed to use RegEx for my iPhone program. I had to go find code on the web to do that. I was shocked to find no native RegEx support in Objective C. How long has this language been around? Did I miss something here? I have been following Xcode 4.0 and it looks like they are well on the way to improving it greatly. There is no tabbed editing but IB will be integrated and they will support even more drag and drop interactions. The nice thing on the Java side is there are lots of IDEs to choose from: NetBeans, Eclipse, IntelliJ, etc. and they all add features to match the others. Right now Eclipse is the standard for Android but IntelliJ will release 10.x with Android support in the near future. For me Eclipse runs just fine but I have tweaked it for speed as I have used it for a number of years. I am using IntelliJ at work along with Xcode. I like IntelliJ better every day and use it for my Mac Java debugging. Xcode is taking time to get used to for sure, maybe 4.0 will make me like it but right now I find it very frustrating. Android uses a newer language (Java vs. Objective C). Java does not require manual memory cleanup although bad programs can still leak memory. It has more IDE choices on more platforms. I found the API / SDK easier to use but I came from a Java background. The emulator is much slower. Experimenting is much easier - everything is free, you can put your app on your phone with no legalese or cost. There are more versions of the OS and many more device versions. So far my special coding has been limited to checking screen size to make sure my UI fits. iPhone has a much better emulator and you worry about less device / OS differences. Objective C is a more old school programming language, it does not hold your hand as much. You use two separate programs IB and Xcode during development but they are soon to be integrated. There are less people programming with Objective C thus less sample code to find on the web. The debugger is more difficult to use especially when you want to view the contents of variables in a collection. You have to battle even to see the contents of strings at times. The debugger is another area they plan on improving in 4.0. I will continue to program on both, neither is a clear winner. I hope Apple takes on the challenge of Android and improves their tools and I hope that forces Android to do the same. Anything that can make my programming life easier I am all for.

I agree that the iPhone dev environment is nicely done. Install XCode, install the iphone dev kit, good documentation, and it just works.
Coming from a heavy Eclipse background, where just about anything done in eclipse usually requires going through a bunch of hoops downloading just the right version of eclipse, and just the right set of plugins, and then much tuning and tweaking, that is a welcome change. Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that Eclipse is the swiss-army knife, and the lazy load functionality mentioned above (which is actually a good feature, if you've ever had to use RAD or something that took 5 minutes to crank up), and basically the disadvantage of being so generic.
The Windows 7 environment looks promising, as Microsoft has always had a great IDE.
That said, I'll mention a quote from David H. Hansson, when he was talking about Rails way back: "And Rails does not need an IDE. That's easy to say when, there is no IDE for Rails." Interestingly, I believe DHH used XCode as an editor although, now people use textmate and other light-weight editors. So I'm all for Intelli-Sense and plug-ins and simulators, but perhaps the true test of a platform is when you can be just as productive without requiring that heavy-duty IDE to smooth out all the glitches in the platform.