Please try out one of Flutter or React Native. I think you’ll be surprised how much nicer they are for anything like this. The code is certainly not cumbersome when compared to the equivalent XML.

Also, in Flutter and React Native you don’t (typically) have to wait for your code to compile as they do hot reload.

You, and everyone else who makes this argument seems to blatantly dismiss the tooling around Android, specifically Android Studio and the layout preview panel. The person you are responding to is talking about editing UI layouts in XML, using the preview panel, without building the project at all.

Everyone loves to talk about "hot reloading" and obsess over reducing build times incrementally as if that's the only way to develop anything faster. No matter how fast your "hot reload" is, it'll never beat the layout preview panel in Android Studio, which is directly rendering your xml in real time, without compiling or building anything.

For static layouts this can work pretty well. I think it is still typically a bit slower/more awkward. And often harder to change. (I actually have most experience with native Android.)

Android Native also has hot reload, what on earth are you on about?

You get both with Android Native, layout preview and hot reloading.

I was addressing the comment and in no way claimed Android doesn’t have a hot reload solution.