Thread: Any alternative of Eclipse for developing android app?

Hi everyone, I am new in java world. I am developing an android app using Eclipse IDE but the problem is -eclipse is running too slow, sometimes it takes up to a minute to do simple things. Are you guys also experiencing the same problem or is there any problem in installation? Or is there any other alternative of eclipse to do the same.

Thanks in advance!

You can use the console and a text editor. I sometimes work with the emulator, VIM, two cygwin consoles (one for building, one for version control) and a file browser opened at the working directory. Of course, you will miss out on the auto completion and intelligent lockups you take for granted with eclipse. I do it this way because my computer is near ancient and simply cannot handle eclipse. (1.6ghz 32bit AMD, 1gb ram - how does your machine compare).

I have noticed that eclipse can run very slow if you have other JVM heavy process (such as chrome) running. The solution is to try and keep enough free memory available so that you are not forced into the much slower virtual memory.

To check what is happening under the hood, go ctrl->alt->del, click view->select column and add the PID. Make note of the PID of eclipse and then go start->run-> jconsole. Connect to the process and check out the memory profile.

Wow I've seen a lot of vim users recently.. you should make a tutorial, because I'm afraid that I'll accidentally delete my library or something.
@vim
"No man should have this power, so we made it free so nobody would try."

Anyway, eclipse seems (for me at least) to be very fast at absurd stuff... but much slower than others for simply building your program (Which I still haven't figured out how to do without running it....), which is why I use DrJava. It's pretty basic, although not as elite as VIM, and is still more IDE-like.

Originally Posted by Tjstretch

Wow I've seen a lot of vim users recently.. you should make a tutorial, because I'm afraid that I'll accidentally delete my library or something.
@vim
"No man should have this power, so we made it free so nobody would try."

Anyway, eclipse seems (for me at least) to be very fast at absurd stuff... but much slower than others for simply building your program (Which I still haven't figured out how to do without running it....), which is why I use DrJava. It's pretty basic, although not as elite as VIM, and is still more IDE-like.

Haha, no chance of the tutorial from me. I am no expert user (that could easily take 20+ years). What I really like about it is you don't need a mouse. As for eclipse, the builds are nearly as fast as they would be on the console but the real drag of using it on a low spec system is the ridiculous load times and unresponsiveness. If I can type three times faster than the text shows on screen then there is a problem (it's the same with netbeans for me).

If you like DrJAVA then why not give BlueJ - Teaching Java - Learning Java a try. It's free and has a bunch of really nice features for new programmers. Also, I really liked working with JCreator and IntelliJ. But non of these are any good for android development so it's off topic.

Originally Posted by KevinWorkman

For what it's worth, I think that new programmers should use the console and a text editor. Wait to use eclipse until you're more familiar with the API and Java in general, or else you'll end up relying on auto-complete and the like.

Agree totally. Once you discover ant + bash or something similar it is easier to understand what an IDE is doing and where/when/how to best use them. Auto-complete is nice sometimes but I very sorry for people who first learn programming with VB.NET which is at a point where you barerly need to type to program (slaps head).

If anybody is interested, I have posted a blog outlining exactly how I set up my workstation for Setting up for Android development without an IDE