Android Studio: not just a simple IDE

Preliminary Exploration of Android Studio

BKJIA Internet headlines in June 5, 2013] for Android Developers, daily development is straightforward for them. You only need to download Eclipse and install the Android Developer plug-in. Android Eclipse plug-ins have done a lot of work for developers, and more or less meet the expectations of most developers. But now, the latest Android Studio released by Google is confusing. This Android IDE development tool is a great leap for any Android Developers.

Although it has the name of "Android Studio" and the software comes directly from Google, most Java developers quickly realize that this IDE is based on IntelliJ IDEA, which is produced by JetBrains. Some developers I know have been talking about the virtues of open source, but IntelliJ idea immediately changes. Some even laugh at me. It is not professional enough not to invest $699 to buy a powerful IDE tool that can save time.

Google knows that Eclipse is not intended for everyone. In fact, the step-by-step environment configuration has put many people out of Android development. By releasing a free Android Development Tool Based on IntelliJ configuration, Google not only meets the needs of IntelliJ enthusiasts, but also brings Android Developers more easily to install and use development environments. However, the bigger question is how Google intends to proceed.

More intelligent Android IDE

Android Studio is built based on the IntelliJ Community version and enhances the appearance and analysis functions. Many IntelliJ fans have a special liking for their complicated editors and clean appearances. In fact, Android Studio runs very quickly and provides responsive interfaces. Yes, it does. The Android simulator continues to surprise me that running on my six-core desktop is slower than running Android 2.2 on a very low-level smartphone that I have been using for more than two years.. Android Studio only integrates simulators. Although it is not fair to complain about this, during the debugging phase, users wait for the Android virtual device to start and take a lot of time and pause periodically.

Android Studio also provides a set of deep analysis tools to help developers complete code and perform analysis before delivery. Android APIs now mark more metadata and usually return NULL pointers. If you forget to catch these exceptions, Android Studio uses the metadata to identify these potential bugs. I wrote some code that looks neat, but Android Studio quickly found hundreds of methods to make the code run more neatly and faster. The IntelliJ team spent a long time writing code that could analyze the quality of code written by developers in the editor, so that developers can refactor the code to improve code running efficiency.

Android Studio provides users with a rich set of tool code for editing and analyzing code, but when it is first run, its control is handed over to the Android virtual device.

The main contribution of Android Studio is that it is a drag control set that can be used to design the Android layout. You can drag a widget and Studio displays the corresponding XML layout file.

Another good feature is that developers can see the size of the designed application displayed on about 6 different devices at the same time. You can resize the layout to see how the layout is displayed on a Nexus phone or tablet. This is a good news for Android Developers who must adapt their applications to a large number of screens of different sizes. Android Studio does a good job in helping to place controls in the correct position, because the most important part in the debugging phase is to test the actual effect. It is indeed good for developers to quickly see the effects of the designed interface in multiple sizes.

To use Android Studio, developers familiar with Eclipse should learn it again. Not only are some buttons in different locations, but Android Studio is also integrated with Gradle, the latest build tool. If the developer is still in the Ant or Maven stage, they will have to use another solution to build the application. Gradle varies with the file structure and language.

Cloud features

In terms of web pages, Gradle can easily create multiple versions, but it is unclear about the future. I think Gradle will be very popular as applications become more and more complex. When I tested Android Studio, I created three different applications that use similar code and used three different projects, because this would be simpler. Such work will become more and more common, because we all want to manage projects in a unified manner.

It is worth noting that Gradle is a typical example of the latest domain-specific language. It is described as a "minimal" language with a well-defined structure to cope with various situations, in this case, Gradle is a Groovy-based DSL, which means that users must repeatedly consider whether the Groovy language and Gradle are suitable for their own learning and use. However, when using Android Studio, you use the Java language, which means that three languages with a slightly different but similar structure must be encountered during programming. Although I have always appreciated the DSL concept, I still feel that it is a bit complicated to use in Android Studio.

Unfortunately, building an application is so complicated that we need a completely Turing build language, so we may use the latest and powerful build tool-Today it may be Gradle. The good news is that cloud-based tools such as Hudson and Jenkins have built-in Gradle tools, so we can expect more and more projects to use it.

As shown in, Android Studio allows you to view the layout of applications on different Android devices at the same time)

The most interesting part about Android Studio is what promises it brings to everyone. Its website publicity is "early preview version", which is the usual method to replace public beta. During use, I did not encounter any serious problems when creating some basic program applications, but I noticed that there are several documents that will jump to the Eclipse document.

Android Studio is fond of Gradle. They believe that Gradle will be more powerful and can be better integrated with the cloud. Google is talking about adding more features, such as release, to the Android development environment. For example, you can use Google's cloud to quickly publish your applications to foreign markets. Android Studio will not fight alone, and it will have powerful support from Google cloud.

This is just Google's claim for the future development of Android Studio. Google believes that Android Studio will not only be a simple IDE in the future, but will increasingly become a portal and integrated development ecosystem with the cloud, beta testers can easily obtain their code, and anyone can create it. Currently, Android Studio is a very powerful IDE on the desktop.