A few months back, I decided to write a Simple ToDo app for Android, then I hooked it up to a cloud backend, using Juju. That was my first Android application, so I got to experience first hand the latest developer documentation and development environment.
Last month, Canonical launched Ubuntu for Phones, that gave me the idea to re-write the same application on QML using the Ubuntu Components.
Clearly comparing a new SDK-Alpha with a stable platform like Android will seem hardly fair, however, keep reading as you might be surprised of the results.
QML vs Dalvik Java
Lets start with QT/QML vs Dalvik/Java – I found QML really easy to get to grips with and be productive. I had the UI (see picture below) running in no time and I would say much faster than with Android. QML is a very flexible declarative environment that allows you to embedded quick logic into the layout. This is a blessing and a curse.
While with Android, it was very easy to keep a nice MVC separation, I struggled to stop the leaks in QML. So while it is very easy to quickly write a functional application, it does not impose what you would consider as good development practices.
In summary, they are both very powerful development environments.
IDE: Eclipse vs QtCreator
Part of the development experience is the IDE. I must say that I simply love the QTCreator. Possibly not as polish as Eclipse but you don’t need to read a manual to use it. Also, with a quick integration with the HUD, it is just very simple to use.
So what is QTCreator missing? A good emulator. The Android Development Kit (ADK) provides a really good user experience to develop mobile solutions. QMLScene gives you similar functionality but does not simulate a phone environment. However, all the technology is there, and I am sure that will be included in the v1.0 version of the SDK.
Documentation
I can’t fault Android developer documentation, but taking into account its popularity, you wouldn’t expect anything else.
I was very surprise of the quality of information on http://developer.ubuntu.com/ and specially with the component showcase.
The only thing to watch out for is that in Android you can get all the info you need from a single website. With QML you quickly end up pinging between Digia, Nokia and Ubuntu pages.
The Code
The code is on my launchpad repos. The actual source functionality is not finished as I am still trying to figure out how to add menu options to access Done items. Anyway, the whole thing is pretty compact compare to the Dalvik code. The actual logic is almost identical in both. A ListView that is populate from an List model. All the data is persisted in SQLite db.
Conclusion
Both environments have been equally painless to work with, the difference is that the Ubuntu environment has *just* been released as an Alpha. I think this is the start of a very vibrant App development ecosystem.
but happy to have help!
