I got a few days holiday, and I thought I planned on learning and picking up on the new Android Studio IDE which was released in December last year, and maybe develop an app. I had attended a two day beginner's workshop at DroidCon 2013, and had learnt quickly the basics of Android app development. Since then, I lost my projects and code to a hard-drive crash. The new Android Studio looked easier to learn. Or so I thought.
For a beginner, Android Studio sucks. It is too complex a development platform. Before one can start developing apps, one has to first play and win the rpg-game "Installing and Settingup Android Studio". I have tried and failed for two days to get the basic setup up and running, I think this is because I have multiple installations of Java on my machine. After installation, the studio.exe can be launched, but it tries to connect and download the latest SDK. I had downloaded the bundled version, but looks like it does not have the SDK itself, just the IDE. And…don't get me started on gradle. I wish there was a way to turn it off and do things the way it was done on Eclipse.
Google, if you want to welcome more developers to your platform, you will have to make things easier. Experienced Android developers may not have issues in picking up the new studio. But beginners like me will be lost.
I am going to try again from office, first downloading just the IDE (because the bundle is a joke), and use the faster connection from office to get the SDK. Hopefully, things will be faster.
