What’s An NDK? And, Will it Make Android Apps Better/Faster?

The first thing that came to my mind after reading this Android Developers blog title…

Introducing Android 1.5 NDK, Release 1

…was: What’s an NDK? I know what an SDK is – Software Development Kit. But, what’s an NDK? It turns out that NDK is an acronym for Native Development Kit. Most (if not all I assume) 3rd party Android apps currently run in a Dalvik virtual machine. The Android NDK 1.5 R1 lets developers write native code (no virtual machine in between the binary code and the processor) in C and/or C++.

Google warns developers that they should think hard about the drawbacks to writing in native code (like many of us did for many many years on all kinds of other platforms). But, I think the ability to write super-fast super-compact code will draw many developers to the NDK. At least, let’s hope so. And, if they do, be prepared for some blazing fast Android apps.

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