Comment Re:Citation needed (Score 1) 745
From experience, working on an Android app in my spare time -
1) The SDK runs on Windows, Linux and OS X. This is a big plus since you can do development using desktop platform of your choice.
2) Android is Java based, which is a relatively civilized language compared to C/C++/Objective C (the relatively safe memory model of Java avoids whole classes of bugs based on memory mismanagement, buffer overflows or wild pointers).
3) Eclipse is a pretty powerful development environment. Having not used it prior to Android development, I'm pretty impressed at its ability to detect and offer to fix syntax errors automatically.
4) Running and debugging your app in the simulator Just Works
5) Access to existing Java class libraries and ability to share code with desktop apps (with some reservations, as android does not support the entire java.* standard library)
6) Multiple ways to install your app on an actual device without going through the Market (can download the
Overall, I would say the development experience is pretty close to normal desktop app development. There isn't a big feeling of "going without" that I would have expected from embedded development - the one exception being filesystem storage, as users cannot be expected to download and install hundreds of megabytes of data required by your app as might be the case on the desktop.