I got myself an HTC Desire over the weekend. Very nice bit of kit it is too.

I may look at writing some simple apps for Android - just to see if I can really - Has anyone got the SDK and had a go?

Is it relatively straightforward?

Cheers.

I haven't had much time to develop any of my own apps, but I've created and modified a few samples I found.

If you know Java, it should be fairly simple to get started. The most popular environment seems to be Eclipse with the Android SDK plugin.

Have a look at these sites for loads of help:

developer.android.com
anddev.org

i did have a go initially, but i couldn't tell you how at the moment. the walkthrough takes you through setting it up and setting up the emulator as well.

gives you a couple of example pieces of code and i actually did manage to get the obligatory "hello world" app running on the emulator.

would probably help if i knew java mind

Thanks for the tips and sites.

Seeing as my Java programming is severely lacking (i.e. Non-existent. ) I'd better know exactly what I'm doing before I have a go.

I found it very easy to get into, but then again Java is my favourite language.

The examples and tutorials are very good from Google and there's loads more online.

I don't like eclipse though...

Ditto, after using Visual Studio for years, it's pretty unforgiving, I'm sure there's another IDE that's supposed to be a bit more like VS, but I can't remember what it's called.

I've written a couple of widgets and put them up on the market place and I'm writing an SMS to Windows notifier thingy atm.

Eclipse isn't too bad but you could try IntelliJ which is a lot better, Java is easy to pick up although not as pretty to look at as C#, the only horrible part is creating GUIs, the whole XML thing with no decent design surface is pretty dire.

Ive written one app so far which has been published for my local community site and its on the market place.

I also develop for iphones and the android dev is far easier from the code side but the lack of gui design tools is a pain compared to the apple apps.

If you could get apples gui tools and androids code tools in one app it would be a lot better

I don't like Eclipse either, I always get frustrated trying to install the Android SDK and then take a break for a month or two to cool down. I don't have any patience with it at all.

Before I download and install IntelliJ do you know if the community edition will fully support the Android SDK? And how fiddle-arsey is installing the SDK on the community or ultimate versions?

Support does come bundled with Ultimate for all Android versions, I'm lucky enough to have access to this, but it doesn't come bundled with the community edition but there is a community plugin not sure how hard it is to install and it doesn't support Android 2+.

Cheers, I'll give the Ultimate 30 day trial a go.

I found this to be quite useful:
http://www.droiddraw.org

No Android SDK for c# .NET I suppose

There is a monodroid in development, last time I looked they were looking for beta testers.

I've tried that and it just doesn't work me (In Chrome it just won't let me put controls on the phone display). The XML isn't too bad it's just time consuming to write and, like all good developers, I'm lazy.

Thanks again...

OK, another noob question.

Is Eclipse like a run time environment? Or emulator?

Eclipse is a development environment, you get the emulator in the Android SDK so you can test your project