Android Studio vs Eclipse with ADT (2015) [closed]

Question

As of 2015, I see that Android studio is an official IDE for developing android applications according to information on their official site and on each page of their site, there is a note suggesting to go for Android studio rather than Eclipse with ADT.

Note: If you have been using Eclipse with ADT, be aware that Android Studio is now the official IDE for Android, so you should migrate to Android Studio to receive all the latest IDE updates.

But I haven't found any latest article about the pros and cons in choosing the IDE or eclipse with ADT. If some one can throw some light on it then it would help other beginners like me in choosing the right app for android development

Answer 1

Android Studio's primary problems:

1. Very slow compilation for debugging. For some of my project Eclipse - 11 sec AS 5 min!
2. String completion is unusable. For example, completion without parameters. No completion for some operators, for example if, else, for etc.
3. AS dramatically slows the PC down: mouse and keyboard are periodically freezing.
4. Project structure is intricated.

So, how to continue using Eclipse if new version of Google Play Services (V30 and higher) is not available for Eclipse but only for AS? This is info how to prepare AS libs (Analytic, ADS, etc) for Eclipse.

Answer 2

I tried android studio(AS) and it makes your computer very very slow. I have a intel I5 core processor but it takes a lifetime to open AS. I tried to code a little and i see that auto-completion is great in AS. I tried to search the internet how to make AS fast so try it a little more. There are bunch of tutorials that say it can make the AS fast including disabling other programs. With all the hardwork you have to input just to make AS fast, i switched back to Eclipse. Eclipse is a lot lot lot faster than AS. Installing AS just wasted one day of my life.

Answer 3

As of May 2015, Android Studio support for NDK has significantly improved. You can choose between automatic native lib generation, or using your own Android.mk in more complex cases. But AS still does not provide a way to debug native parts of an app (if you are using JNI). This may be the last reason to keep Eclipse on one's desktop.

Update, a year later: Android Studio 2.2.1 provides decent NDK support, and is almost fully compatible with the old Android.mk - based configuration. And it does support C++ debug, much easier than Eclipse ever did.

Answer 4

There's a question already here which answer this perfectly.

To add my bits, Android Studio is the one which is getting the latest update and is going to be the only official IDE for the future, so I think everyone should move to Android Studio. Android Studio is far better, stable and lightweight IDE. Eclipse has been crashing on me since I started Android Development, while Android Studio had a lot less crashing. On top of that we have a very good integration of Maven for libraries in Android Studio.

The future is here with Gradle, ANT is a thing of past.

Answer 5

Here are some thoughts about how Android Studio team has not been able to become a product of a lot better than Eclipse and why, in my opinion, Google Android Studio will close the project in the near future due to some chronic problems: http://turbocolour.blogspot.com/p/eclipse-adt-vs-android-studio.html

Answer 6

Interesting topic for me: I used to think that Eclipse was a hell of IDE for building Android apps... ironically, now that I am using AS things got worst. For sure AS is much more integrated with the android platform but that is why I would have expected something smoother and hassle free: Eclipse had the excuse of being a general purpose IDE after all. I think the problem lies in the android architecture itself and the related dev tools that makes coding awkward, unpleasant with much lower throughput compared to other more stable platforms.
Google seems not to care too much about changing API and forcing project/code upgrades to make possible to update projects written for previous versions. They seem to not care at all about backward compatibility. They introduce changes their libs, even stripping away entire APIs from the core (apache for instance in Android 6), think about play services (that is becoming now bigger than the OS itself), admob, analytics....they keep on changing and changing forcing to upgrade / change source / re deploy. Every time I see a popup in the dev console about a new feature I feel shivers down my spine. What about the fact they discontinued eclipse while their studio was still unstable and most important not giving decent reliable tools for porting projects ? Have you guys tried to port a big old project into AS ? It’s a kind of hell... I just think they don't care that much about coders cause we ARE A LOT, We do not pay them and want it or not you will have to conform if you want to stay in. I cannot even think about for example Microsoft or Apple doing the same with their dev tools, but it is also true that in such cases you pay them. My opinion of course.

@Eugene

The reason you say this is the same reason aged developers end up without jobs.

Hey kid, RESPECT. Have a look to what the previous generations of coders did for the IT and what your one is doing and then think about what you write. Just give you some names to start your homework: Stallman Knuth Torvalds Berners Lee Wozniak Ritchie Codd Thomson Engelbart and I could continue ....