ASashark·Aug 2, 2017
iOS: docs are so good you'll find yourself reading way past what you actually need, just for fun. They're great. APIs generally well thought out. Examples current. Xcode's sometimes frustrating, but not that bad. Worst part's the signing process which remains prone to breaking for mysterious reasons (this is probably less true if you have just one project that's always current, but if you have historical projects that need upkeep and you bounce between different apps it's bad) and I still have to look up again how to get all the parts working if I go more than a few months without messing with it, because I can't seem to keep it in my head.
Android: most docs amount to half-assed Javadoc output. Longer-form sections frequently contain bad advice and outdated examples. When the examples aren't outdated they always seem to avoid demonstrat
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ing the particular use you need them to, as if by magic. APIs themselves sometimes weirdly bad (see, at least as of ~6 months ago, the Android google maps address search API being significantly worse than the Javascript one). New UI elements are frequently a duct-tape-heavy veneer over existing UI elements that lacks customization you'd expect to exist, unless you resort to reflection, and generally feel like something the summer interns threw together. Support for all that pretty Material UI stuff is laughable.
And while I know there isn't an iOS public bugtracker to compare it to and that that's also kind of a bad situation, the Android bugtracker is mostly useful as a source of either comedy or suicidal ideation, depending on your demeanor. You'll learn what I mean if you spend much time with Android.
For Android your best bet is to read everything Square (yes, that Square) has written about it, and follow their patterns and use their libraries wherever possible. See:
https://github.com/square/flow
https://github.com/square/retrofit
https://medium.com/square-corner-blog/simpler-android-apps-w...
and so on.