You've hit the nail on the head. It's not the system engineer's job to develop a useful application framework for common use cases any more than it is a Linux kernel developer's job to do so. Still, it has to be somebody's job, and it's clear that it isn't anybody's job on the Android team. For example, there's a hacky HTTP client library built by the Google Play Android client team (http://developer.android.com/training/volley/index.html) that is promoted for general use for some silly reason, and to use it, you're supposed to copy the library's source code into your project. Pure amateur hour. There should be a team within Android building well-thought-out, properly versioned, and sanely distributed libraries to simplify Android application development. There should be, but there isn't.