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Re:Google quits selling tablets by etaioinshrdlu on Saturday June 02, 2018 @01:07AM (#17212831)
It was around the time I started playing with fragments that I realized that the native Java android toolkit was a giant pile of crap.

Android, I think, is not even supposed to be a well-engineered system. It is not central to its purpose. Its purpose is to eat marketshare, collect data, and ensure there is an outlet for ads. It only has to work well enough to do those things :)

I get the sense that it was all slapped together as quickly as possible.

Re:Google quits selling tablets by themacguffinman on Saturday June 02, 2018 @01:12AM (#17212850)
Well, yeah, that's the goal of everything commercial. Being well-engineered is a means, not an end.
Re:Google quits selling tablets by pjmlp on Saturday June 02, 2018 @04:35AM (#17213513)
iOS and UWP are both commercial and the quality of their tooling and OS frameworks runs circles around Android's.

Sadly it is hard to win over free beer.

Re:Google quits selling tablets by etaioinshrdlu on Saturday June 02, 2018 @03:30AM (#17213294)
Nah, tons of companies are incredibly passionate about quality in itself. Sometimes to a fault!
Re:Google quits selling tablets by pcwalton on Saturday June 02, 2018 @11:39AM (#17215004)
> I get the sense that it was all slapped together as quickly as possible.

It was, historically. Android was a startup that had to get to market as fast as they could. To make matters worse, once the iPhone came out they had to quickly switch from a Treo-like interface to a iOS-like one in order to stay relevant.

To Google's credit, they've been trying for years to clean it up, but there's only so much they can do…

Re:Google quits selling tablets by dcbadacd on Saturday June 02, 2018 @10:20AM (#17214688)
I got the same impression, it's just filled with hacks to get proper behavior and don't get me started on the support libraries, oof how I hate those.