ASE Makes Android Development Pleasant

Having got myself a G1 phone a few weeks back I’ve been tinkering a lot. Mainly with the Android Scripting Environment that I plan on writing about soon but I thought I’d give a quick summary of what I’ve found so far on this platform – and why I don’t like it (kind of)!

It uses Java – of a sort. More specifically it uses the Dalvik VM which is a register based as opposed to stack based VM and has many of its core classes based on Apache Harmony.

(Did I sound like I knew what that meant? Because I didn’t. I was paraphrasing Wikipedia – I love Wikipedia’s ability to make you sound like an expert at anything)

That’s why I hate it – the Java part. I hate Java. I’ve not developed in Java since university and have conducted a mental cleansing of all my painful memories of the language. As such I am a desperate ‘newbie’ on this platform. Scrabbling round like some lost raccoon on the North York Moors (there are no raccons in England so it would be VERY lost).

ASE comes to rescue the day but first….

Why ASE? Android programs are ‘easy” enough to write.

This is in the wiki docs of ASE. This question gets asked – apparently quite frenquently.

All I can say is: “Holy mother of jesus-bloody-ballsing-christ”.

What I find even more shocking is the answer…

That’s very true. Android’s development environment does make life pretty easy.

PRETTY EASY?!?!

WHAT?!?!

Are you a masochist??

It took an hour just to get it all up & running. Getting Eclipse working how its meant to with the right plugins, setting up emulator images, downloading tutorials and the multitude of other faffing tasks.

If you’ve gotten used to scripting languages like Python, Ruby or PHP then programming Java is akin to stabbing your eyeballs repeatedly with a rusty fork. Its rammed full of verbose bullshit, silly configs, insane amounts of setup, strict typing, misery, self abuse, pain, kitten torture, puppy genocide, etc, etc.

For example try taking a look at the Android Dev tutorial. Part 1 will consume 6hrs of your life. After which you will have created a useless ‘notepad app’ that doesn’t allow you to edit or delete notes. Only create a new one with hard coded contents and a name. 6 hours and I could have built Athens Online – an online city of dreams and Greek pornography. What? Everything online is porn.

Anyway…

Java Can Come Later

The Android Scripting Environment is a breath of fresh air though. This was released in May/June and allows development of quick, funky scripts in Python, Lua or BeanShell (*hiss*, *spit*). Ruby and Javascript are to follow soon.

If you fancy developing the scripts on your PC and running them on the phone you’ll need a tool available in the Android SDK called ADB (Android Debug Bridge). Though if you’re following the ASE docs don’t forget you need to turn on USB Debugging on the phone to enable it.

What It Can’t Do – Yet

I love ASE and I love the German gent who made it even more – even though I know only his name. I’m sure that he’s a great man for only a great man would create ASE.

Okay – I’ll stop now.

ASE can’t do the following at the moment:

• Compile in to APK/packages for selling or distributing on Market or elsewhere.
• Its restricted to a subset of the Android API made available by an RPC interface.
• It can’t cure cancer.

I’ve got high hopes for ASE and its making my life more fun. If you’re a Python/Lua/scripting sort then you’ll love it too.

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1. Practice Makes Perfect
2. Python GUI Programming? Painful
3. Java reaching the end of the road?
4. Sun’s Gosling on Ruby and PHP
5. Parsing Time Using Python