"It takes the Android Emulator ~2 minutes to boot up on my perfectly-modern machine. But what really hurts is the edit/debug cycle. Every time I change a bit of Java and need to rerun the app, it takes about 30 seconds to redeploy and start up in the Emulator. Compare that to 5 seconds on the iOS Simulator. It may not sound like much but remember you’ll be doing this hundreds of times throughout your day."
I do not have any experience with iOS development but I can vouch for how hard it is to use the Android Emulator. I just recently submitted an Android application for a programming course and if it were not for having an Android mobile device to replace the emulator I would not have completed the project in time. The Emulator is slow and buggy and made it hard to test new code.
If you are interested in developing an Android application deffinately check it out but take this guys advice and get a device to test it on. It will save you a lot of time.
Every time I change a bit of Java and need to rerun the app, it takes about 30 seconds to redeploy and start up in the Emulator. Compare that to 5 seconds on the iOS Simulator. It may not sound like much but remember you’ll be doing this hundreds of times throughout your day."
Is there no practical way to reduce this by using unit tests? I understand if you're doing UI tweaks but otherwise it seems far more efficient to do targeted testing.
I do not have any experience with iOS development but I can vouch for how hard it is to use the Android Emulator. I just recently submitted an Android application for a programming course and if it were not for having an Android mobile device to replace the emulator I would not have completed the project in time. The Emulator is slow and buggy and made it hard to test new code.
If you are interested in developing an Android application deffinately check it out but take this guys advice and get a device to test it on. It will save you a lot of time.