I am a coach for an FTC robotics team of high schoolers. We control the robots with Android phones, so we develop with Android Studio. (This is FTC's recommended tooling, and for all intents and purposes the only option). Teaching high schoolers to work with Android Studio was almost impossible.
1 - The author is right: The WYSIWYG GUI tools are buggy as hell and I have just have the kids dive into the XML - which brings its own set up problems.
2 - The gradle system is hard to configure but once it is right and you check in the configs you don't need to change it.
3 - It basically requires 8GB to run with any reasonable performance. Getting a set of laptops with 8GB for a non-profit is a challenge! Even with 8GB, build and deploy cycle can take 3 - 5 minutes.
4 - I do like the remote debugging. It is essential for debugging a robot with a phone that is driving around on the floor.
Android 2.0 was an improvement, but it is still a challenging environment.
I am a competent programmer who uses IntelliJ at work, so I don't know how other FTC coaches could possibly get a team up and running with Android Studio.
1 - The author is right: The WYSIWYG GUI tools are buggy as hell and I have just have the kids dive into the XML - which brings its own set up problems.
2 - The gradle system is hard to configure but once it is right and you check in the configs you don't need to change it.
3 - It basically requires 8GB to run with any reasonable performance. Getting a set of laptops with 8GB for a non-profit is a challenge! Even with 8GB, build and deploy cycle can take 3 - 5 minutes.
4 - I do like the remote debugging. It is essential for debugging a robot with a phone that is driving around on the floor.
Android 2.0 was an improvement, but it is still a challenging environment.
I am a competent programmer who uses IntelliJ at work, so I don't know how other FTC coaches could possibly get a team up and running with Android Studio.