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Can anybody tell me how many ways are available to develop applications for the Android platform. The only one way that I know is through Java. I read somewhere that other than Java; Python, Rails and Native C can also be used to develop Android applications. Please help me if anybody knows it, in terms of how these languages are used to create an application with any tutorials, documents or books.

Bryan
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Rajapandian
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4 Answers4

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There are probably currently 10 different ways.

There is jPython, jRuby. I recommend neither yet. It will take time for either of these to become mature on Android.

There is the NDK and JNI to communicate with Java threads. Not recommended unless you already have an existing C app you want to port to it. Not really recommended for C++. The NDK only contains a small subset of C++ headers.

There is Titanium Mobile Accelerator. You develop that in Javascript, and it compiles to native code for either the iPhone or Android (thought, since Apple made that recent announcement, it's probably not good for the iPhone unless Apple gives it its explicit permission).

There is Phone Gap. Not as nice as Titanium Accelerator. Javascript that runs on a Javascript Web Runtime (Phone Gap has been cleared by Apple recently)

There is VMxml (I think). You develop in Java, and will cross-compile to Objective C or other kinds of Java (including Android and xml).

There is Flex/Flash (I think). After all, Android should be able to play Flash. Right?

There is Lua, for $99, with the Corona SDK.

There is Rhomobile and the Rhodes framework, which uses Ruby and Rails-like structure, to generate native Android code. I used to be a big fan of that one. Not so much now.

Does that make 10? And there are few more that I just forgot about. If you want to start with something simple. Start with native Android, basically Java and xml (there are plenty of tutorials everywhere), it's not as complicated as it seems. If you really find that idea bad, then try Titanium Accelerator Mobile (this one has plenty of demo code in the package you download from them, plus you can find plenty of tutorials as well by just googling for them).

Stephan Branczyk
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  • Flash and Air development for Android is just going in to Beta. If you're interested you can sign up here: https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=labs_flashplayer10_android_signup – David Webb Apr 19 '10 at 11:58
  • Can you provide more details on what has turned you off from Rhomobile and Rhodes. I have been trying to follow that but not yet started. I have seen some confusion in the ecosystem since Motorola takeover. Is that the reason, or is it more on technical and usability aspects as compared to other options. – Sam Wilder Oct 07 '12 at 11:56
  • Sam, At the time, my concern with Rhodes was the lack of regression testing, because the framework would work one day, and stop working the next for some things that had been working previously (not that this affected already compiled applications and not that this affected the framework unless I downloaded a new version of it). That being said, this concern is really really old and probably out of date, and long predates the acquisition by Motorola. I would assume that by now, this is no longer the case. – Stephan Branczyk Oct 08 '12 at 23:32
  • In 2013 I started with Android NDK in C, and was repulsed with what I had to go through learning a C-interpreted language scriptin ant to build the APK...when I'd rather code in Google was written in Python, right, so why Java or Python I wondered. Visual studio 2015 *now* gives an interactive interpreter with a Python generous auto-complete editor for ,py files...I learned with CPython 3.x, and it does allow precompilation of .py, so why not continue with it.I am waiting for a free, 2-3-step .APK packager to automate adb build/push. – codeReview Aug 16 '15 at 11:54
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See this question for Python development.

See android-ruby project (for Ruby and not Rails development).

For native development you need the NDK.

Community
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kgiannakakis
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The given list is not complete, but added all important ones

N K
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0

How do I code thee? Let me count the ways. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GARMe7Km_gk

Cheezmeister
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  • fyi: dead link as of now – codeReview Jul 29 '15 at 02:44
  • Thanks for reporting. The video is still available on [youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GARMe7Km_gk), but is now probably as obsolete as that link. – Cheezmeister Aug 01 '15 at 21:16
  • IDE is visual studio 2015. IIRC, PyICU on PyPi supports MacOX, Windows, and Solaris(https://pypi.python.org/pypi/PyICU/1.9.2). iPython, recently being updated on Github side, a package GUI API that takes seems a simple installation, and integratable into my IDE 2015. – codeReview Aug 16 '15 at 11:36