Also, you can do Flash CS5 and Appcelerator Titanium on it now instead of pure java. Check those out too.

It's not perfect, but if you're learning Android UI, check out http://droiddraw.org/. It's a WYSIWYG interface editor, like Interface Builder. It's not pretty, but I found it to be a good way to understand the fundamentals.

I honestly plan on seeing if CS5 can create anything serviceable as a UI for business apps. I can honestly see adobe going on the warpath there after this bullshit and now they have all the iPhone platform compatibility guys with nothing to do.

If that fails, droiddraw looks like a possibility. I just tried it out. Would need to test it further, but has promise.

was using the command line tools (plus vim, of course) and then installed eclipse and the plugins just to see 'what i was loosing'.

Compiled the Hello world example. 20kb.

Compiled then under the command line tools... 12Kb.

It was by no mean scientific as I used some different titles and app names. but that was it. http://meme.yahoo.com/gbarros/p/1hKEYg-/

It's not a performance thing. It's a productivity thing.

Eclipse is not particularly intuitive for an IDE (and if you're a java developer who uses it all the time, you have no clue if it is as you're past the point where you're learning it).

Eclipse is very testy on some platforms to get working

Eclipse really confuses the issue when there are some compile errors in your android code.

Eclipse is a fullscale ecosystem for some problem you are not solving (largely enterprise java development).

90% of the tool has nothing to do with android.

Most if not all of the "Android Plugin" is calls to standalone EXE's you can use without eclipse, and which make gobs more sense when eclipse isn't doing the calls for you.

I honestly made a pretty pure run using Android via Eclipse, then read 1 article of "Android Without Eclipse" and was able to Compile repeatedly, deploy and debug the apps I was working with easily once I jettisoned it.