Android Studio(java) vs Visual Studios(c#) for Android app/game development

Question

What are pros & cons of these 2 IDEs?

Which would you recommend starting with for a beginner in Android App Development?

Answer 1

⚠️Marked best for obvious reasons⚠️
😘Rememer Kryptic loves you! 😂

Visual Studio:
👍Pro;
▶️Specilized for Performance, Speed, Complex Programs, Games
▶️Lots of support
▶️Stable
▶️Easy Debugging
▶️OOP but not restricted to only OOP(cpp, c#?)
▶Pointers for manual memory management(cpp, c#?)

👋 (Pro&Con) &/ Inbetween
(couldn't find any *yet)

👎Con;
▶️Write Once COMPILE Anywhere (better to write for a specific OS)
▶️Prone to mem leaks (if programmer(s) didn't handle pointers properly)
▶️Not specialized for Android
▶Small library, requires 3rd party libs(cpp, c#?)
➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖
Android Studio:
👍Pro;
▶️Generalized to make any type of program (one shoe fits all, could be a Con)
▶Write Once RUN Anywhere (Uses JVM)
▶️Android standard (replacing eclipse)
▶Large library no need for 3rd party libs

👋 (Pro&Con) &/ Inbetween
▶️Safe against hackers(thanks to not having any control over pointers and that it's run in a virtual machine, but less programming control(see Garb. Collect.))
▶️Garage Collection(handles pointers, less programmer control, more automation, safe, slower(maybe?) )
▶️Strictly OOP (some programmers might prefer this? )
▶️Easier to learn(at the cost of a ton of unsupported features, ex: multi-inheritance, pointers, deconstructors, etc.)

👎Con;
▶️Buggy
▶️Constant requires large updates that often does not support previous versions
▶️Not much support yet due to being new

Updated: May 7, 2017

➕I'll add more to this when I do more reasearch & take suggestions from this post

Answer 2

@Joe these last few days I've been leaning toward using Android Stuido(Java)! Mainly because it's the standard for Android which is the platform I'm going to be devoted to coding for. Also it's something entirely new to me which is exciting!

😁I'll have to check that course you mentioned as well! Thanks for the suggestion!

Answer 3

I do have a couple of years xp working with visual studios but that was years ago. I still need a major refresher course on that. But I'm wondering if it's worth it if my ultimate goal is app development and game design for Android. 🤔

Answer 4

Do u think C# in Visual Studio can compete with Java in Andriod Studio?

Answer 5

@Joe no clue what that means lol

Edit: AS == Android Studio
.02 == 2cents?

Answer 6

@Dayve performance shouldn't be to big of a problem with my pc.
I'm definatly going to look into these other compilers that are being mentioned here.
I see quite a bit of positive feedback about Sublime and eclipse in other java related posts.
I'm just looking to start off on the right foot😀

Answer 7

Android Studio(Java) as well as Visual Studio(C#) both suck at performance...both need at least 4gigs of RAM to work properly. As they are official, they have a lot of features present...but still, I recommend Codeblocks, netbeans, eclipse etc for development ;)

Answer 8

@Andrew Kharchenko Thanks good to know.

I used Notepad++ a long time ago. Does it now have a way to build a gui? Or is that strictly Visual Studio feature? (I've only ever used VStudio as an ide)

Answer 9

AS. my .02

Answer 10

I guess my quick first reaction was due to my preference for the Udacity course "Android Development for Beginners" which was built by Googlers and of course uses Android Studio.....part of the magic of that particular course is a weird emulator they built for the early lessons...when either Android Studio or Visual Studio might be too intimidating for total beginners....they call it the "XML/V emulator"....I think it's the secret sauce in that course...

Answer 11

and Kryptic thank you for this excellent question.

Answer 12

@Andrew yup.

Answer 13

@Victor Android Studio has come a long way in a couple of years in my opinion. The emulator is a fairly decent speed most of the time, was unusable

Answer 14

so I guess I'm conceding that Visual Studio is a more polished product:)

Answer 15

Well if you use Unity, you will have Visual Studio installed.

Answer 16

Turbo C++...

https://www.sololearn.com/discuss/288609/?ref=app

Answer 17

@Kryptic But be warned that Sublime Text is only an editor, not an IDE (like Notepad++, Brackets or Atom for example). And for the Android apps in java you should use Android SDK which now (not outdated version) is available only for Googles own Android Studio (not sure if there is a way to use it in JetBrains' IDEs and nearly sure that it's not possible to use Eclipse now [was possible before]). Don't know much how Xamarin works...

Answer 18

I think it's for: "Android Studio. My 2 cents." ;-) Yes, "AS" is rarely used abbreviation compared to "VS" :-)

Answer 19

Go for visual studio cross platform IDE. this will not only help you with Android, but also give you a chance to program in other platforms. C# is a very robust and powerful developing tool. it is one of THE BEST Microsoft tools ever created

Answer 20

@Kryptic Notepad++ doesn't have a way to build a gui in any convenient way :) And all mentioned editors too (don't have that ability). Visual Studio, Android Studio do have... (I myself used VS a little bit and Delphi & C(++)Builder to build gui fast (RAD - rapid application development started from Delphi as fas as I remember).