Over the last ten years I’ve made a few toy Android apps, mainly to see if I can, but sometimes to scratch an itch.

That itch has returned, and wow, the first-time experience for getting started with Android Studio really really hasn’t gotten any better.

• Download and install: fine
• The first sample I want to try: requires a Canary version of Android Studio
• The next sample: requires an older version of the SDK to be installed (lucky I already know that that means playing with SDK Manager and that API 29 means Android 10, right?)
• Giving up on samples and just creating a basic new app: works fine! yay!
• Running it: still requires opening up and messing with AVD Manager. And of course there are no default settings for anything other than Google devices, and nowhere I can see that publishes a range of hardware profile to import.

For fuck’s sake, what happened to helping the user? Why not just enable the “Run” button and wizard the shit out of that first run experience? Why make it so hard?

Sheesh.