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Comment by orangecat | Hacker News Reader

Google hasn't managed the fragmentation problem very well, they haven't done enough to control the quality the Android OS between carriers and manufacturers, and they've utterly mismanaged the Android Market.

All true, and still they've had great success. (I'm actually surprised, given how bad the Market is and how blatantly the carriers are screwing up the phones). Which just means they can do even better if they can address those obvious problems.

On the other hand, even though I generally like Java I'm finding the move from iPhone development to Android development to be a depressing step backwards

It was the opposite for me. Between getting rid of header files and manual memory management, and having the app run right away on my phone rather than futzing with certificates, I'm enjoying Android development much more.

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> "All true, and still they've had great success."

I'd argue they haven't. The success would've been the adoption of the platform - but as far as I can see none of the major Android phone vendors actually support the platform - they see it more as a way to skimp on software development costs, and offload it onto Google instead. There's little to no interest in even updating the phones, or supporting the platform as a whole.

I feel that Google has been taken for a ride by Motorola, HTC, et al - there's a lot of lip service paid to Android, but none of their actions have helped solidify the platform, instead being treated simply as free code. The fact that there are a lot of units of hardware moving off shelves means little, IMHO, for the long-term success of the platform.

I feel that Google has been taken for a ride by Motorola, HTC

That's fair play tho' - Google sought to commoditize handsets.

But they do invest in the platform. All the customization stuff means they have something invested in the platform.

> The fact that there are a lot of units of hardware moving off shelves means little, IMHO, for the long-term success of the platform.

This is true for all mobile platforms. People change their phones often and have few true dependencies on the underlying OS. RIM might be the "dominant smartphone" at the moment but I doubt they're feeling super comfortable.

FYI, Windows 7 Phone uses the Microsoft .NET SDK so you can actually write in any .NET language. This is one of the few real reasons I would switch to Windows 7 Phone -- I would love to try programming a phone app in F#.

This might come true for Android soon, too: http://monodroid.net/

There is an effort to provide tools for Android development in a bunch of scripting languages. It's not ready for prime time yet and it wasn't clear to me how well you'll be able to access the libraries, but it's a promising alternative.

Is this the one you had in mind? http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/

ASE doesn't allow you to build fully featured applications, only simple scripts that can interact with the Android APIs.

On the other hand Ruboto[1] looks very promising, it's a project that brings JRuby to Android application development.

[1] http://ruboto.org/

I would say that fragmentation problem is not that big of a problem in general. It should be handled much like iOS is handling in basically they are not allowing iphone 3G phones and earlier not to have certain features, and ability to download apps.. which is essentially the same thing. I have a 3G and theres more and more apps that I'm unable to download, and I don't have access to a lot of features in the latest iOS.

This is a slight red herring, I do wonder how many of these apps you would like, could actually be rather easily made to run on your phone (can you give a specific example, many apps do not need 4.0 features or could easily have them ported around)

Apple have done a great job of outdating the old sdks, mainly through the method of dropping simulator support for the previous sdks and no legitimate route of running previous firmwares on an iPhone other than holding them back (obvious flaw in this plan, how does a new developer acquire an ipod running 2.2 or 3.0)

Android on the other hand has had no where near this rate of attrition of the previous sdks with only really the initial release not being heavily supported.

However Android suffers from the problem you are not just waiting for Google to update the firmware so you can't make your app 2.0+ only in the thoughts that if users want my app they can update their firmware, this step would remove a lot of htc, sony and other phones that do not currently have the ability to run a 2.0 firmware whilst still being a very comptent phone.

As for the carrier "enhanced" firmwares....

I wonder if Android is competing more with the iPhone or with the generic phones that aren't branded anything in particular.

Remember those graphs of user's current phones related to the next phone they bought? Apple users were happy to continue with Apple, and even BB users wanted iphones.

"All true, and still they've had great success."

Google has had great success, which is good to see.

"Which just means they can do even better if they can address those obvious problems."

Not necessarily. If all these people are just buying android phones because they can not get an iPhone, then nothing Google does will change that. The real test will be when the iPhone is available on more carriers, and when people need to upgrade there Android devices, and stay with Android. It is just too soon to tell, so far.

In many non-US countries, iPhone is available on multiple carriers. My understanding (though I don't have numbers readily available) is that it's quite successful in many of them.

I can't speak for any other country, but here in France, where the iPhone is available on any carrier, almost all of my acquaintances have either iPhones or, if it's supplied by their job, a Blackberry. The only people I know that have Android phones are programmers.

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