So... this is tender ground to be treading (holy wars).
I am a strong believer in your tool feeling good to you; it is the environment you create in. The better it feels, the faster and more cohesively you will work (within reason).
That being said, I'm comparing Eclipse+ADT to IntelliJ. I have no opinions on alternative home-brew solutions that are a combination of editors and command line.
For Android development, you'll want the following things:
- Strong Java editor support
- Strong Android UI support
- Strong debugger support
- Strong deployment/emulator integration
- Support for whatever Android version you are targetting.
The two IDEs in all those areas are damn near similar, except...
ADT 12 just added a slew of nice, Android-specific context-sensitive content assists that are really damn nice.
In addition, ADT 12 jumped the visual layout designer forward in a big way with accurate component rendering in preview as well as support for custom components[1].
I think something worth considering is that Android support is a feature, among 100 other, that the core IntelliJ team develops, support and extends.
ADT is the official, Google-driven effort to develop and expand their Android tooling on the Eclipse platform. The ADT team isn't distracted by things like autocomplete support, classpath scanning, project formats, etc... all they do is develop Android tooling directly ontop of Eclipse.
I would expect that the ADT tools continue to be more robust and outpace competitor implementations.
I would also point out that the ADT team has some seriously fantastic developers on it; if you are the type to enjoy high level "new feature" overviews of IDEs, check out Tor Norbye and Xavier Ducrohet's presentation at Google I/O 2011 showing off a lot of the new features in ADT 12[2].
I realize up to now it has sounded like I'm an Eclipse fan, but I am just a "tools to get things done" fan.
I am a strong believer in your tool feeling good to you; it is the environment you create in. The better it feels, the faster and more cohesively you will work (within reason).
That being said, I'm comparing Eclipse+ADT to IntelliJ. I have no opinions on alternative home-brew solutions that are a combination of editors and command line.
For Android development, you'll want the following things:
- Strong Java editor support - Strong Android UI support - Strong debugger support - Strong deployment/emulator integration - Support for whatever Android version you are targetting.
The two IDEs in all those areas are damn near similar, except...
ADT 12 just added a slew of nice, Android-specific context-sensitive content assists that are really damn nice.
In addition, ADT 12 jumped the visual layout designer forward in a big way with accurate component rendering in preview as well as support for custom components[1].
I think something worth considering is that Android support is a feature, among 100 other, that the core IntelliJ team develops, support and extends.
ADT is the official, Google-driven effort to develop and expand their Android tooling on the Eclipse platform. The ADT team isn't distracted by things like autocomplete support, classpath scanning, project formats, etc... all they do is develop Android tooling directly ontop of Eclipse.
I would expect that the ADT tools continue to be more robust and outpace competitor implementations.
I would also point out that the ADT team has some seriously fantastic developers on it; if you are the type to enjoy high level "new feature" overviews of IDEs, check out Tor Norbye and Xavier Ducrohet's presentation at Google I/O 2011 showing off a lot of the new features in ADT 12[2].
I realize up to now it has sounded like I'm an Eclipse fan, but I am just a "tools to get things done" fan.
[1] http://developer.android.com/sdk/eclipse-adt.html
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq05KqjXTvs