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  1. Stackups
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  5. Android SDK vs Cocoa Touch (iOS)

Android SDK vs Cocoa Touch (iOS)

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Android SDK
Android SDK
Stacks27.6K
Followers20.7K
Votes800
Cocoa Touch (iOS)
Cocoa Touch (iOS)
Stacks202
Followers208
Votes12

Android SDK vs Cocoa Touch (iOS): What are the differences?

Introduction

The Android SDK and Cocoa Touch (iOS) are the software development platforms used to create applications for the Android and iOS operating systems respectively. While they both serve the purpose of developing mobile applications, there are some key differences between the two platforms that developers should be aware of. Here are six important differences between Android SDK and Cocoa Touch.

  1. Programming Languages: Android SDK primarily uses Java for application development, whereas Cocoa Touch uses Objective-C and Swift. This difference in programming languages requires developers to have different skill sets and approaches when building applications for the respective platforms.

  2. Device Fragmentation: Android SDK is known for its extensive device fragmentation due to the wide variety of manufacturers and devices running the Android operating system. This poses challenges for developers as they need to ensure their applications are compatible with different screen sizes, resolutions, and hardware capabilities. In contrast, Cocoa Touch has fewer device variations as iOS devices are solely manufactured by Apple, making it easier to optimize applications for specific devices.

  3. App Store Distribution: The distribution of Android applications can be done through multiple app stores, including the Google Play Store, as well as third-party app stores. This grants developers more flexibility but also raises concerns about quality control and security. On the other hand, Cocoa Touch applications can only be distributed through Apple's App Store, which has stricter review guidelines but offers a more controlled and secure environment.

  4. Development Tools and Environment: Android SDK offers a range of development tools, including Android Studio, Eclipse, and IntelliJ IDEA. Developers have the freedom to choose the tool that suits them best. In contrast, Cocoa Touch development is focused on Xcode, Apple's integrated development environment (IDE) designed specifically for iOS and macOS applications.

  5. User Interface Design: Android SDK follows an open design philosophy, allowing developers to customize the user interface extensively. The Material Design guidelines provide a unified aesthetic, but developers have more freedom to create unique UI elements. In contrast, Cocoa Touch follows a more rigid design philosophy with specific guidelines, such as the Human Interface Guidelines (HIG), which ensure consistent and intuitive UI design across iOS devices.

  6. Development Community and Resources: Android SDK benefits from a larger development community and resources due to the platform's market share and open-source nature. This means developers can find more tutorials, libraries, and forums to help them with their projects. While the iOS development community is smaller, it is known for its quality resources and active developer support.

In summary, the key differences between Android SDK and Cocoa Touch include the programming languages used, device fragmentation, app store distribution, development tools and environment, user interface design philosophy, and the size and activity of the development community.

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Advice on Android SDK, Cocoa Touch (iOS)

beinoriusju
beinoriusju

Feb 25, 2022

Review

Whatever you do don't go WordPress path. Developers over-there tend to ignore system limitations and hardcode and overengineer their solutions so as to please their clients. If you are a beginner probably you'll get to work on someone else's shitty code and will be asked by your boss to do "yet another impossible thing with Wordpress". And... Probably... You'll do it.

My suggestion is: think in stacks and don't start too low. Starting with HTML, CSS3 and JavaScript is too low. Start on higher levels and with something practical. You'll have time for basics some time later and it would be much easier, because you'll see those technologies are compliment to what you do and not your main objective.

My suggestion for you:

  • Android Mobile App Development path (complex enough so you won't get bored)
  • All things web3 crypto, nft, virtual reality, blockchain path (has tons of computing web development tasks)
  • Cloud computing setup and administration path (good, because you say you're not good at programming)
  • Artificial intelligence and automation (this is future, people need this)

I've also found it helpful to think of each stack as a surface (find Google Images "radar chart") . Every time you try to learn something new you start in the center, with all technology-points overlapping. You are as low as you can get and you know nothing. Your job is to expand outwards each technology so as to make a stack-surace. The more surface the better. You'll see that some technological-aspects are easier to expand than others and plan your time accordingly.

Have a good start!

107k views107k
Comments
Omran
Omran

CTO & Co-founder at Bonton Connect

Jun 19, 2020

Needs adviceonKotlinKotlin

We actually initially wrote a lot of networking code in Kotlin but the complexities involved prompted us to try and compile NodeJS for Android and port over all the networking logic to Node and communicate with node over the Java Native Interface.

This turned out to be a great decision considering our battery usage fell by 40% and rate of development increased by a factor of 2.

622k views622k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Android SDK
Android SDK
Cocoa Touch (iOS)
Cocoa Touch (iOS)

Android provides a rich application framework that allows you to build innovative apps and games for mobile devices in a Java language environment.

The Cocoa Touch layer contains key frameworks for building iOS apps. These frameworks define the appearance of your app. They also provide the basic app infrastructure and support for key technologies such as multitasking, touch-based input, push notifications, and many high-level system services.

Statistics
Stacks
27.6K
Stacks
202
Followers
20.7K
Followers
208
Votes
800
Votes
12
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 289
    Android development
  • 156
    Necessary for android
  • 128
    Android studio
  • 86
    Mobile framework
  • 82
    Backed by google
Pros
  • 6
    Backed by Apple
  • 4
    It's just awesome
  • 2
    User Friendly Performance
Integrations
Java
Java
Objective-C
Objective-C
Swift
Swift

What are some alternatives to Android SDK, Cocoa Touch (iOS)?

Node.js

Node.js

Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.

Rails

Rails

Rails is a web-application framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern.

Django

Django

Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.

Laravel

Laravel

It is a web application framework with expressive, elegant syntax. It attempts to take the pain out of development by easing common tasks used in the majority of web projects, such as authentication, routing, sessions, and caching.

.NET

.NET

.NET is a general purpose development platform. With .NET, you can use multiple languages, editors, and libraries to build native applications for web, mobile, desktop, gaming, and IoT for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and more.

ASP.NET Core

ASP.NET Core

A free and open-source web framework, and higher performance than ASP.NET, developed by Microsoft and the community. It is a modular framework that runs on both the full .NET Framework, on Windows, and the cross-platform .NET Core.

Symfony

Symfony

It is written with speed and flexibility in mind. It allows developers to build better and easy to maintain websites with PHP..

Spring

Spring

A key element of Spring is infrastructural support at the application level: Spring focuses on the "plumbing" of enterprise applications so that teams can focus on application-level business logic, without unnecessary ties to specific deployment environments.

Spring Boot

Spring Boot

Spring Boot makes it easy to create stand-alone, production-grade Spring based Applications that you can "just run". We take an opinionated view of the Spring platform and third-party libraries so you can get started with minimum fuss. Most Spring Boot applications need very little Spring configuration.

Phoenix Framework

Phoenix Framework

Phoenix is a framework for building HTML5 apps, API backends and distributed systems. Written in Elixir, you get beautiful syntax, productive tooling and a fast runtime.

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