Android Studio vs. Eclipse

                Android Studio vs Eclipse

Google’s Android Studio is a development tool for Android based on the IntelliJ IDEA platform, one that managed to attract a lot of hype when it rolled out in mid-2013. Roughly a year later, the platform is still in “early access preview,” and work on it is ongoing. 

     

Whereas Eclipse doesn’t offer native Android support, it does have some nice tools to help you build Android applications—one such tool is the Google Plugin for Eclipse, made by Google. So let’s compare Eclipse and its Google-made Google Plugin with Google’s own Android Studio, developed with the help of the people who make IntelliJ IDEA. 

For me Android Studio is better From Eclipse , following are the reasons and comparison  in 6 distinct areas:

• Gradle Integration

Android Studio uses the quick growing Gradle build system that is so integrated, and Gradle is really a great tool. If you have decided to go with Eclipse than yet say to look at Gradle’s features and try it out and see if it fits with your project. In case you want to go with Android Studio, no need to worry about being stuck with Gradle system because it is really good. Eclipse uses Apache Ant as its prime build system that is an extremely robust XML based build system and lots of Java developers have been already familiar with it.

• Advanced Code Completion

Both Android Studio and Eclipse feature the typical Java code auto completion. But, we usually found that the code completion is really better on AS compare to Eclipse which looks to get a bit perplexed at times and doesn’t provide precise results most of the time. Keep in mind, the more time you will spend as a programmer grinding out code, the more you value code completion.

• User Interface (UI)

We know Eclipse interface and quirks very well, It is big and somewhat overwhelmed, but we have to face it because most IDEs are overwhelming when you use them first time. So, keeping this in mind and found that the tools and menu items in Android Studio tend to get me where we want to be a little more promptly and effortlessly than their counterparts in Eclipse. In addition, AS was built purposely for Android, while Eclipse was built to all-purpose IDE that can be used with any language and platform.

• Organization of Project

Although, both IDEs work in a different way to help you manage and organize your projects, but when you want to work on many projects in Eclipse you need to merge them into a workspace. In an attempt to switch to a different workspace, you have to choose the path, after that Eclipse restarts and this always looked awkward. Additionally. On the other side, Android Studio uses modules to manage and organize your code modules have their own Gradle build files which mean it can state their own dependencies. In compare AS looks more natural, but if you have been using Eclipse for some time, then it takes a little bit time to get used to.

• System stability

Eclipse is simply Java based software and a larger IDE in comparison with Android Studio, so it needs considerably higher amount of RAM space with a high CPU speed to function properly. Failure to meet this criterion causes Eclipse crashing and getting unresponsive. On the other hand, Android Studio is now released with very less bugs, and provides a more stable performance guarantee than Eclipse and the system needs are lower too. AS is quick, while you need 1 or 2 minutes for building release versions of complex projects in Eclipse, but can make the same project within 30 seconds in AS.

• Drag-and-Drop

Android Studio has GUI (Graphical User Interface), but Eclipse does not have. However, the drag-and-drop feature is not essential for coders, who are not very much concerned regarding the visual elements of their applications. A developer needs to have detailed knowledge of Visual Basic, so that the developer can use the drag-and-drop feature appropriately. It’s a new feature in Android Studio, but its state of being absent in Eclipse does not matter greatly.