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Comment by jinushaun | Hacker News Reader

My problem with Android development is that, being a non-Java developer, I never knew when to use the Android SDK or the Java SDK or the Apache stuff for certain tasks. For example, networking. Googling online for solutions, I don't know if any of the Java code I find is Android compatible.

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My rule of thumb: - if you see "java.awt" or "javax.swing" in any package import, run away. - if you need to download a native library to run a hello world, run away too.

The rest is/should be fair game. Try to run a hello world on the device.

Is there a good library for doing graphics in Java? I was thinking about trying processing, but it doesn't seem quite appropriate.

What kind of graphics? - for charts on android, http://code.google.com/p/afreechart/ - for maths calculations, http://commons.apache.org/math/ - for opengl graphics on android, it's already a pain with all the fragmentation here. There's OpenglES10 (but no longer implemented on Xoom), OpenglES20 (2.2/2.3 and up, but no VBO support on 2.2), Renderscript (3.0 and up), JNI (if you want to program in C), MonoAndroid (for mono, you need to pay for that though)... - otherwise, just go with the official Canvas API http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/graphics/index.htm...

> being a non-Java developer

I'm a Java developer and I don't know, either. I suspect the expertise you're looking for might be described as an "Android developer" ;)

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