A quick comparison of ‘getting started’ on Windows Phone 7 Development and Android Development

My friends and me were having a casual chat on WP7 development and Android Development and slowly that became a hands-on session of ‘getting started’ on both the platforms.

A quick comparison on getting started on Android and WP7.

Android

WP7

1. Download Eclipse 1. Install Visual Studio express 2010
2. Download ADT for Eclipse. Adding the ADT to Eclipse was little painful because there was very little help in choosing the right Eclipse for Android development. I chose the basic Eclipse version and I ran into a whole lot of reference issues when I was installing the ADT. 2. Install WP7 developer tools Windows Phone There you are. You can now start writing your “Hello World” app.
3. Install SDK for Android Development  
4. Add Android platforms and other components to your SDK.  
5. (If you are testing your program on a device) Install the USB driver for Windows. Very little information available on the USB Driver support for Windows 7. I hope the Vista driver works on Windows 7.  

 

After preparing the development environment coding the ‘Hello World’ was relatively easier in Windows Phone 7.

All you need to do to code the ‘Hello World’ in WP7 was

1. Create a new WP7 project

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and that takes you to the screen with lot of pre-populated XAML code to make the developer’s life easier. Also the VS 2010 with WP7 dev tools lets you design the front end directly on a WP7 GUI. That’s converted into the respective XAML with formatting automatically.

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Edit the ‘page name’ in the XAML code and there you go. Our first ‘Hello World’ program is all done.

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Please note that all the above are my personal views (especially from the Development perspective).

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