Questions

"The more you know, the less you know"

This list of questions will keep record about the evergrowing number of things that "could" benefit from being answered, or at the least being asked.

Concept

Each question here can feature "thoughts" that describe, or elaborate on the questions background.
For each a list of potential imperfect or outright "wrong" answers are provided for the "be-spass-ment/be-lustig-ing of the estimed" reader.
Free speech (as in USA 1st Ammendment should be assumed). Imperfect and lacking copies of that "i.e. the pity of German GG Meinungsfreiheit" is not enough and a grain of salt is recommended
Links to Q&A sites (e.g. stackexchange) is provided
Unpolishedness is and error is the required ingredient to provoke appreciated of true beauty...,
Imperfection resuscitate!
I like smileys, but not as much as I would wanna use unicode, so ASCII all the way ;-p

List of Questions

Is Ubuntu the Windows of the Linux world?

Maybe the Dbus and the whole XDG totally is totally frustatring, needlessly "provoking excess complication" of principly understandable principles?
Are there enough similarities?

- Ubutu (when choosing among linux Distros) is like choosing Windows, mostly a decision of afraid "cover-your-ass" management
- is "snapd" a great way to infringe the value of "packages" (one could argue a core value proposition of distributions as in "set of packages"). 
- Install is GUI?
- Configuration is GUI?
- Targeted noob users?

What is the point of Android Studio ?

Maybe, to install bloated software from Google, why?
As with Ubuntu vs KISS-Linux, the GUI-klicki-bunti should "empower" the noobs which one could argue below some level of mastery are better adviced to leave it to the "adults". If you need an IDE to work...

What is the point of Gradle in Android build?

Advertised as a "help/assistence" with dependencies, it strikes the at first sight by not even being able to setup the JAVA and furthermore the ANDROID SDK... :*( ?

now you might say, well it "uses java" so it is a "hen-egg-issue" ?
then however the whole "we go back to gradlew (yes we can spell it gradlew, why even say gradle-Wrapper-script or similar.... )" is basicly a shell script
worse it it a "dual-boot" inclode the WINDOWS-NOOBS (did we mention that using windows .... (fun!!!)
anyway, bottom line is that of all the dependecy management, gradle is "at best" only able to "help"(loosing the word rather loosely here) with the *jar help
Is gradle an elaborate joke? Is Java's ideas a joke?
why is it so "slow"
why does it need to setup a daemon (making eversomore unfit for being quickly spun-up in the CI/CD)
I know that Makefiles are hard and have shortcomings.. but the comparison of "overly complicated groovy, now kotlin-DSL" (and no it is not the internet conntion DSL, rahte the "we so cool, we so industry-standard-ish")
is Gradle possible because people rightly were dsappointed, annoyed, "blessed" by the XML shitiness (yes ANT looking at you)
Does the madness of AndroidManifest.xml which we then have to make into a "binary" version because of the verbosity of the XML sucks...
why is there just no case in which XML did not start stinking , when scaled???

What is it with the JAVA VERSIONS and ANDROID ?

(aka. which SDK to install to build android packages, when also using gradle) Riddle me this: Java versions?????

Somehow there is Java "8" (which we refere to also as 1.8, just to show our willingness to confuse needlessly, because we actually thrive to make it harder for others?) This java version however appears to not have "been enough", why? (probably had not enough "compiler" or there siging-tool was not great enough??)

when Java 1.8 can be Java 8 and clearly the "class-version" is somewhere in the 30-65 range and this is great?
then... we should definitively use API-Level versions of Android that are like 20-34 instead of sticking with the "commenplace, as told in the smartphone webshop" Android 13 -> 14 -> 15...
also we should require "gradle" to run on JAVA 17 , while there is 2024 also JAVA 21 (mind that is in relation to the 8 as in .8) while the Android API-leve 33 requires JAVA JDK version 11
and of course let us have JDK and JRE, because again, confusion is king, we need to use abreviatios AND acronyms, best way to have stuff "working"?
and then which JDK "brand", as of course there is the "original" SUN (stolen by Oracle? well it was captialism.... right?) well anyways I am even unsure how "ethicly better SUN was" but well then there is OPENSDK
and so which version is needed?
and then with what is "compiled" we need to do dalvik , well or we "did" , or is there again something new?
is this all in KOTLIN or JAVA now?
what is it with the verbosity of import .... of everything and required pain of try...catch for exceptions one does plainly not care that much about (how often do people recover and wanna recover the IOException, is this a "broken hard-disk/ssd?"
why require all the "helpful" verbosity in JAVA to then have to divert all that to "automagic" in IDES.. i
why does developing in this world (which at its core is supposed to be "linux/unix" beauty) is such a "pain", because it is populated by the noobished accepting people
will AI help it?
INFO

Android API-Level 33 requires JAVA 11, gradle somehow could imply JAVA 17, attention there is JAVA 21...

With JAVA versions being 11,17,21 one is tempted to asume the versions are similar to Ubuntu versions ... but are they?

What is it with the ANDROID NDK versions anyway?

using the "great peace of software" (clearly nothing that a direct FTP-style server could not have made better) sdkmanager on sees the best version confusion possible

#> SOME_MAGIC_COMMAND_LINE_involving_`sdkmanager --list`  lines numbered via `nl`

     56  build-tools;34.0.0-rc1 | 34.0.0 rc1 | Android SDK Build-Tools 34-rc1
     57  build-tools;34.0.0-rc2 | 34.0.0 rc2 | Android SDK Build-Tools 34-rc2
     58  build-tools;34.0.0-rc3 | 34.0.0 rc3 | Android SDK Build-Tools 34-rc3
     59  build-tools;35.0.0 | 35.0.0 | Android SDK Build-Tools 35
     60  build-tools;35.0.0-rc1 | 35.0.0 rc1 | Android SDK Build-Tools 35-rc1
     61  build-tools;35.0.0-rc2 | 35.0.0 rc2 | Android SDK Build-Tools 35-rc2
     62  build-tools;35.0.0-rc3 | 35.0.0 rc3 | Android SDK Build-Tools 35-rc3
     63  build-tools;35.0.0-rc4 | 35.0.0 rc4 | Android SDK Build-Tools 35-rc4
     64  build-tools;36.0.0-rc1 | 36.0.0 rc1 | Android SDK Build-Tools 36-rc1
     65  build-tools;36.0.0-rc3 | 36.0.0 rc3 | Android SDK Build-Tools 36-rc3
     66  cmake;3.10.2.4988404 | 3.10.2 | CMake 3.10.2.4988404
     67  cmake;3.18.1 | 3.18.1 | CMake 3.18.1
     68  cmake;3.22.1 | 3.22.1 | CMake 3.22.1
     69  cmake;3.30.3 | 3.30.3 | CMake 3.30.3
     70  cmake;3.30.4 | 3.30.4 | CMake 3.30.4
     71  cmake;3.30.5 | 3.30.5 | CMake 3.30.5
     72  cmake;3.31.0 | 3.31.0 | CMake 3.31.0
     73  cmake;3.31.1 | 3.31.1 | CMake 3.31.1
     74  cmake;3.6.4111459 | 3.6.4111459 | CMake 3.6.4111459
     75  cmdline-tools;1.0 | 1.0 | Android SDK Command-line Tools
     76  cmdline-tools;10.0 | 10.0 | Android SDK Command-line Tools
     77  cmdline-tools;11.0 | 11.0 | Android SDK Command-line Tools
     78  cmdline-tools;12.0 | 12.0 | Android SDK Command-line Tools
     79  cmdline-tools;13.0 | 13.0 | Android SDK Command-line Tools
     80  cmdline-tools;16.0 | 16.0 | Android SDK Command-line Tools
     81  cmdline-tools;16.0-alpha01 | 16.0.0 rc1 | Android SDK Command-line Tools
     82  cmdline-tools;17.0 | 17.0 | Android SDK Command-line Tools
     83  cmdline-tools;2.1 | 2.1 | Android SDK Command-line Tools
     84  cmdline-tools;3.0 | 3.0 | Android SDK Command-line Tools
     85  cmdline-tools;4.0 | 4.0 | Android SDK Command-line Tools
     86  cmdline-tools;5.0 | 5.0 | Android SDK Command-line Tools
     87  cmdline-tools;6.0 | 6.0 | Android SDK Command-line Tools
     88  cmdline-tools;7.0 | 7.0 | Android SDK Command-line Tools
     89  cmdline-tools;8.0 | 8.0 | Android SDK Command-line Tools
     90  cmdline-tools;9.0 | 9.0 | Android SDK Command-line Tools
[...]
    128  ndk;27.0.11902837 | 27.0.11902837 rc2 | NDK (Side by side) 27.0.11902837
    129  ndk;27.0.12077973 | 27.0.12077973 | NDK (Side by side) 27.0.12077973
    130  ndk;27.1.12297006 | 27.1.12297006 | NDK (Side by side) 27.1.12297006
    131  ndk;27.2.12479018 | 27.2.12479018 | NDK (Side by side) 27.2.12479018
    132  ndk;28.0.12433566 | 28.0.12433566 rc1 | NDK (Side by side) 28.0.12433566
    133  ndk;28.0.12674087 | 28.0.12674087 rc2 | NDK (Side by side) 28.0.12674087
    134  platform-tools | 35.0.2 | Android SDK Platform-Tools
    135  platforms;android-10 | 2 | Android SDK Platform 10
    136  platforms;android-11 | 2 | Android SDK Platform 11
    137  platforms;android-12 | 3 | Android SDK Platform 12
    138  platforms;android-13 | 1 | Android SDK Platform 13
    139  platforms;android-14 | 4 | Android SDK Platform 14
    140  platforms;android-15 | 5 | Android SDK Platform 15
    141  platforms;android-16 | 5 | Android SDK Platform 16
    142  platforms;android-17 | 3 | Android SDK Platform 17
    143  platforms;android-18 | 3 | Android SDK Platform 18
    144  platforms;android-19 | 4 | Android SDK Platform 19
    145  platforms;android-20 | 2 | Android SDK Platform 20
    146  platforms;android-21 | 2 | Android SDK Platform 21
    147  platforms;android-22 | 2 | Android SDK Platform 22
    148  platforms;android-23 | 3 | Android SDK Platform 23
    149  platforms;android-24 | 2 | Android SDK Platform 24
    150  platforms;android-25 | 3 | Android SDK Platform 25
    151  platforms;android-26 | 2 | Android SDK Platform 26
    152  platforms;android-27 | 3 | Android SDK Platform 27
    153  platforms;android-28 | 6 | Android SDK Platform 28
    154  platforms;android-29 | 5 | Android SDK Platform 29
    155  platforms;android-30 | 3 | Android SDK Platform 30
    156  platforms;android-31 | 1 | Android SDK Platform 31
    157  platforms;android-32 | 1 | Android SDK Platform 32
    158  platforms;android-33 | 3 | Android SDK Platform 33
    159  platforms;android-33-ext4 | 1 | Android SDK Platform 33-ext4
    160  platforms;android-33-ext5 | 1 | Android SDK Platform 33-ext5
    161  platforms;android-34 | 3 | Android SDK Platform 34
    162  platforms;android-34-ext10 | 1 | Android SDK Platform 34-ext10
    163  platforms;android-34-ext11 | 1 | Android SDK Platform 34-ext11
    164  platforms;android-34-ext12 | 1 | Android SDK Platform 34-ext12
    165  platforms;android-34-ext8 | 1 | Android SDK Platform 34-ext8
    166  platforms;android-35 | 2 | Android SDK Platform 35
    167  platforms;android-35-ext14 | 1 | Android SDK Platform 35-ext14
    168  platforms;android-7 | 3 | Android SDK Platform 7

while CLEARLY the consumer shown Android Version does not help (mind you they even went so far as to use "sweets/desert" as names to make it hard to count, like in , 1.2,pan-cake,..."i guess icecream" , 12????")
it s apparent that the tools (to start why is there tool, buildtools(noconfirming versions to platform.. even rc versoins why is that????)
well bottom line NO NDK (N as in "native" as in not JAVA-fun as in more sanity, well "native" but let us say NDK, becuase we would rather have you guess..), no NDK version corresponds anything to anythinhg
"en plus" , c'e di piu' ancora we will require the dreaded cmake, also in some crazy version
bottom bottom line, complete guesswork and f*ck*ery
after you decipher (trial and error out the NDK to android SDK riddle , with all the gradle and JAVA version fun ...), you are begging for the sweet mercy of "yaml" sanity where breakage is "only caused" by whitespace f*ck*ps X-)
notice how the (why do you even exists you are not good) sdkamager (aka google execs wanna make you sign a license during install compliation) is a pain, while bein a tool for the command line it does all to make it hard to get the info required. Because like ncurses or stty or anything was not invented and it is "ok" to shuffle excess whitespace ... (why do I even bother)

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