[jsolson]

So, I spent some time trying to implement the architecture proposed in that talk. I kept finding myself adding just tons and tons of more or less boilerplate code. This felt wrong to me. Surely there must have been a better way.

Fortunately, Google released the source for the Google I/O app, built using the same architecture. What did I discover? A giant pile of boilerplate code to accomplish very little in terms of actual functionality. Moreover, this was for an app which fit pretty well into the relational model (small objects with few relations each).

It may be current best practice, but there has to be a better way.

[rogerbinns]

Unfortunately it is very easy to end up with boilerplate code when using Java. It isn't a direct fault of the language but rather that Java developers hate making decisions so you end up with endless layers of abstraction and indirection. (Immortalized as FactoryFactoryFactory.)

You may find this list of libraries used in Android apps useful. There are several that cover this architecture pattern if you want to use them (eg data access, networking, format parsing):

http://www.appbrain.com/stats/libraries/dev