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

I am a seasoned developer in eclipse adt and recently switched to AS ( Dec 2015) . I should say eclipse is definitely better than AS! True eclipse crashes but so does AS and even more! Eclipse know how a Java developer thinks and thus is very very intuitive. AS crashes blatantly throwing NPEs which is embarrassing! As of now AS is definitely over-hyped. I am sure intellij has done some evil deals with google to push its IDE. People who are voting for AS have definitely not worked in eclipse for long. This debate is becoming more of "Who knows what!" rather than "Which is better!"

Here is an article that I am currently writing. Its high somebody raise his voice:

http://pissedoff-techie.blogspot.in/2016/01/why-android-studio-sucks-over-eclipse.html

Answer 2

The main Pro now is one has to use it for Android dev. The main con is many other tools still use Eclipse. Even Appium automated test framework for Android.

Nowadays one must use Android Studio. It has great features such as code search: one can context click on

Find Usages

when a class is highlighted and find uses in the code. (nevermind the word "usages" is incorrect English. :-) It's the Google way. Swim with it.

It has some tighter integration than was accomplished with Eclipsed such as the nice feature to context menu on an xml layout file and find where in code it is used. Useful.

Also, it uses Gradle so people can write their own build processes rather than having an IDE do it automatically. I think this frees Google from having to waste time figuring out how to make the IDE handle all the configuration mess.

While our build went from 2+ minutes with AS 1.x to 17 minutes with AS 2.x, this could be attributable to how we have our Gradle files laid out. We need a build programmer to make sure our build configuration is correct.

As you can see, the main Pro is one has to use it and the putative Pros are it has better support for Android code navigation and screen designers. The main Con is it moves from the standard IDE used for most all other Java development and it doesn't provide drastic improvements in performance. Another Con is it arguably introduces the need for a new role of build engineer; but many projects already were bogged down into manual build definitions with Maven; so, that may not be a Con depending on your team's speed.

Answer 3

First, Android Studio is created and maintained by Google toolkit development team. That means that seemingly every latest update of Android Development will be pushed to AS at the first time. Second, AS is an integration of different Android Development Tools, including ADT, IntelliJ, Gradle, Maven, Ant...You know, ADT could be pluggin in many different open-source development tools, like Eclipse, IntelliJ, NetBeans...When you migrate projects from one to another, some problems could be caused because they have different programming rules and formats which pains not only developers but also Google's and Android's. That is a question. So Android Studio may be a solution for this.

Answer 4

In my opinion:

• Android Studio is official IDE for Android developer which was provided by Google. So, we can have latest support for updating or any official change from google.

• Using Android Studio is better than Eclipse for layout. You can code the layout and see the preview [at least, when I answer this question, Android Studio is better than Eclipse]

• With build.gradle we can easily access share library of others on github.

• We also can avoid some silly bugs with code analyzer tool of Android Studio (without add any plug-in). And we also can have many other help from it to improve coding style or logic, ...

• I feel mad with the problem of generate R.java on Eclipse. Sometimes, my Eclipse does not generate this file, so I have to find many solutions to solve it. On Android Studio, we can easily deal with this problem (this problem almost occurs due to define resource).

• If you familiar with Shortcuts (combination key) on Eclipse (Mac OS or Windows,...) you can configure to get this on Android Studio: Go to File -> Settings -> KeyMap -> Keymaps dropdown Option. Select from them.

• But, Android Studio is not always good. Specially, when you work on a big project, which includes many projects (each project will generate a apk file). Android Studio is not possible to open two projects in a single window. New projects can only either be opened in a new window or replace the project in the existing window. Someone talks that Module in Android Studio is same as project on Eclipse and Project in Android Studio is same as workspace on Eclipse. But, I think it is not equivalent.

• gradle and indexing process on Android Studio is so heavy for wooden PC (just like laptop core-i5 + RAM 4GB + HDD sata), it will result in showing Android Studio is not responding

Answer 5

• Indexing. Causes AStudio to load up in a matter of years. Afterwards, same a Eclipse. +E

• Language support. +A

• Perspectives. One has to actually start fumbling for the different
  windows in AStudio once they need to switch between design / debug / code. This hassle was completely taken care of by the use of
  Perspectives. +E

• Debugger. Incredibly slow to launch in AStudio. Even Running an app
  takes ages to complete in AStudio. And on the rare occasions it
  doesn't, one ends up with all sorts of exceptions in his app under
  development or plainly app won't install any longer. +E

• Support. StackOverflow is the main resource in both cases. Just that with Eclipse there is not much need for it. +E

• UI: AStudio is just eye cancer. Eclipse is such a breeze. +E

• Building: gradle > ant; but Eclipse also offers mvn. Also, this is
  the main reason of slow run/debug -ing in AStudio and there is no way around it. You just have to swallow the pill and wait 15-20 seconds
  every time you change a line of code. +E

• Auto-save: just makes me think Google felt I was retarded and this
  feature would save my life. +E

Final score:

A : E

1 : 7

Which begs the question of why in the world did they switch to AStudio. That being said, we naturally have no say in this, we just blindly follow the Man.

Answer 6

IMO everything you can do with Android Studio (gradle, maven, etc) you can do it with Eclipse faster and easier and i mean "faster, easier" because in Eclipse if any problems arises like "error XX" you do a quick search on yahoo/google/whatever and thousands of results appears of guys who had the same problem and how to fix it.

I've been programming with Eclipse for C/C++ and Java over 8 years already switching to IntelliJ for me is a total waste of time with translates in a huge loss of money, all my clients wants their apps for yesterday and i can't have the luxury of "playing" and wasting time tweaking a really different IDE while i have bills to pay. So in my case i will 100% stay with Eclipse.