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Comment by tomasien | Hacker News Reader

I've heard that, and that's fine - I appreciate the suggestion and will probably use it, but if that's actually the best then people will take Android dev more seriously when the best is the standard IDE. Right now Eclipse is the default and it blows.

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Eclipse is the default for most Java development, but I know fairly few serious Java developers who use it. Some do, I'm not saying they don't exist, but IntelliJ--of which Android Studio is a fork--is generally the go-to tool amongst the experienced, skilled Java folks I know. Double for Scala. (I used nothing but IDEA for Android work at my last job, for about eighteen months - Eclipse is certainly not required and doesn't really make it easier.)

I was wondering how IDEA compared to Eclipse for android dev, in large part because I'm interested in porting my app to Kotlin, if it's not too huge a jump. It's good to hear that it works well, despite not being the "official" default.

Although I cannot compare to Eclipse. I'm a .NET Dev with an interest in Android. In fact I'm falling out with MS and sticking to that for a day job, but want to do Java / Android in my spare time. I've just completed the Courera programming Android course and I did the whole thing in IDEA community edition. I had no problems what so ever getting answers to any questions. I was relatively comfortable and productive within about 20 hours. I had no previous Java experience (although I'm a clean C# coder for over 6 years)

I was impressed with the tools you get out the box. I've paid hundred (close to thousands) for similar tools in .NET.

Android Studio is completely replicated within IDEA itself, so there's that too. We used a Maven build that worked really well within IDEA--it correctly wired up the Android facet and everything.

I don't know anything about Kotlin on Android, though.

Second this. Not to say I'm an experienced Java developer, but after trying both, I'm sticking with IntelliJ, which was introduced to me by a Google SSE who definitely favored it over Eclipse.

Actually "Eclipse is the default" is probably going to be false very soon. Every mid to senior level Android developer I know has migrated to Android Studio for months already. The advantages of Gradle and Studio are very apparent almost immediately.

Android Studio is the recommended IDE for any new projects. It's made by JetBrains, and it's 100x better.

I do not like Eclipse - it is clunky and often requires restarts to pick up changes or clear itself of confusion - and have never used Android Studio, but AFAICT the latter is still not the recommended editor according to the Android documentation - https://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html says "If you're a new Android developer, we recommend you download the ADT Bundle to quickly start developing apps." The ADT bundle is Eclipse-based. On the Studio page it warns "Caution: ... you may encounter bugs" (though as I say, with Eclipse I'm also sure you'll encounter your fair share of bugs!)

> On the Studio page it warns "Caution: ... you may encounter bugs"

Android Studio only added Gradle, which provides Groovy for its scripting, recently. Groovy has a history of shipping standalone versions as soon as possible and letting users find the bugs, and only afterwards does Grails bundle the version. I'd say Gradle-bundled sits somewhere between standalone and Grails-bundled on the testing scale for Groovy versions.

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