# Android Development Through the Eyes of an iOS Developer

DevFeed: [Android Development Through the Eyes of an iOS Developer](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/android-development-through-the-eyes-of-an-ios-developer-22302.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.thecodedself.com/Android-Development-Through-the-Eyes-of-an-iOS-Developer/>)

Author: Keegan Rush

Published: 2017-03-16T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [The Coded Self](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/the-coded-self.md>)

Topics: [Android](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/android.md>), [Mobile](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/mobile.md>), [iOS](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ios.md>), [Android Studio](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/android-studio.md>), [Development](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/development.md>), [Xcode](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/xcode.md>), [Objective-C](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/objective-c.md>)

Tags: [android](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/android.md>), [android-development](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/android-development.md>), [android-studio](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/android-studio.md>), [developer](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/developer.md>), [ios](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ios.md>), [ios-development](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ios-development.md>), [refactoring](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/refactoring.md>), [xcode](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/xcode.md>)

## AI overview

An iOS developer shares initial, explicitly opinion-based observations from trying Android development. The comparison covers Android Studio versus Xcode, Activities versus view controllers, device and screen-size fragmentation, version support, and XML-based localization.

## Source excerpt

I've recently dipped my toes into Android development to see the differences in environment and tooling as compared to iOS development. While I haven't done much as of yet, I hope to ship some Android apps in the future alongside some iOS ones. I figured it was time to understand the platform so that I can better relate to the woes of Android development. Disclaimer Note that this is entirely opinion based, and these are only initial opinions. Understanding of any language or SDK fleshes out over time, and I'm looking forward to see how my understanding and opinions change as I write more and more Android code. The Findings I expected to see much more boilerplate and repetitive code as opposed to iOS, where we have the ability for frameworks to be more powerful and simple at the same time by tapping into the Objective-C runtime. While this was true to some extent, I'd like to talk more about some of the other differences I noticed: IDE If you're ever used a Jetbrains IDE or plugin, you'll love Android Studio. It's such a pleasure having the platform's standard IDE being one by Jetbrains. I've been burned by Xcode too many times, namely due to bugs and lack of refactoring tools, and I for one am quite pleased with Android Studio. Activities vs ViewControllers Where you'd use a UIViewController in iOS, you're using Activities in Android. While passing data through Intents is not perfect in my eyes, I prefer it to using the prepareForSegue method on iOS to see if the segue identifier matches the one you expect and then configuring the destination view controller. However, if you don't need to pass data around, I must say that handling all your segues in a Storyboard without writing any code is very convenient. Supporting different platforms and devices I'm starting to see that we have it so easy on iOS when it comes to supporting other devices. There's an almost unlimited number of hardware and screen size combinations for Android. Many iOS developers can name almost e