Android

One thing I'd like to see is Android have more of a presence in universities. It'd give CS students useful exposure to mobile development and allow them to put all of the Java that gets crammed down their throats to good use.

I'm in my second year of a CS degree. We have a required module titled "Mobile Application Development" which from what I've heard is purely Android development. There is also an optional iPhone development module which is less popular due to the £120 Apple developer fee (I expect the people who take this module will be the ones who bring their shiny Macbooks to every lecture and complain loudly when asked to put them away).

We had an email last year asking for input on which platform to develop on this year so it's also the students' decision to learn Android.

I teach the intro. to HCI course at a Canadian university. The course project includes the design and implementation of a mobile app. I'll be using this article as evidence that my students should develop for Android rather than the iPhone.

Most would prefer to develop for the iPhone, and are taking steps to gain access to Macs and developer accounts for that purpose. This will be a nice push in the other direction.

Sorry if this sounds mean, but using this article as evidence is a poor decision. The article contained one mans opinion with no support to any of his arguments. Yelp and FourSquare finally look as good as iPhone? Dad wants a tablet so he should get a $200 Android tab? Where is this $200 iPad competitor? It's not the Galaxy Tab that was just made available in Russia for $1200. There's no ne else.

By all means teach your class Android if they want it, but don't use _this_ article as proof that they should.

I am actually surprised Apple would charge developer fees for academic purposes. Wont they be much better of creating future developers for their ecosystems, as compared to getting their wallet fatter by $120/student?

From talking with other developers, developing a good interface for Android is much more painful and costly than developing one in iPhone. I caution you that you might get poor course evaluations because it might be more of a struggle to get something implemented in Android vs iPhone.

Free university licenses exist, though I think it needs to be set up by the institution

http://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/university/

Not quite what you are getting at, but a lot of university-led CS research uses Android. Android hits a sweet spot where it's easy to hack, but at the same time changes you make are relevant to millions of shipping devices. Security research in particular has a lot of fun with Android, because you can analyse the existing platform, then turn around and build your idea, then turn around and run it on real hardware without too much pain.

That does not, of course, necessarily filter into intro CS classes. I have seen a few "mobile development" classes in universities, but they seem to be split between iPhone and Android.

It sounds like you wish to force your own platform preference on your students. I'm not sure how this article counts as evidence for anything other than one individual has convinced himself iPhone vs Android is going the same way as Mac vs Windows.

Not in the least. We support both. Most students don't have Macs and feel pressure to develop for the iPhone.

Of course you're right - it isn't strong evidence, just another opinion.

Thanks for the feedback. I definitely worded my comment too strongly. Of course that article isn't strong evidence.

We're supporting both Android and iPhone.

That's good to hear. During my internship at Google this past summer, I mentioned to the university outreach folks that they should work with schools to emphasize Android in coursework. It'd be nice to have some enthusiasm coming downstream from Google on this one.