Where are the Android freelancers?
Here’s my current theory developed after talking with a bunch of folks at the Ruby Hoedown.
The Ruby community is obviously very entrepreneur and freelance friendly. Though there are lots of Linux savvy users, you just can’t deny that there is a large faction of Rubyists that are Mac enthusiasts. That means that when Ruby developers think “mobile app” they are primarily thinking about iOS in its various flavors.
Programmers that make their way to Ruby and fall in love with the language tend to take a vow of Java chastity. They devour books like Beyond Java. The very premise of Rails is that you should have fun when programming and your framework should provide that. Developing with Android must seem like a giant step backwards; an unresolved cognitive dissonance. Who wants to be first in the pack to admit they’re hacking in Java again.
On the other hand, Android java doesn’t look any crazier than Objective-C. Maybe iOS developers have given Cocoa Touch a pass because it is an Apple product, I don’t know, but in the big picture compared to Ruby and compared to Rails, I don’t think either language is significantly more lovable than the other.
Of course, I am completely ignoring developers who have made platform decisions based on Apple vs Google store.
My working theory is that most of the people who find Android development emotionally and technically acceptable are probably the least likely to embrace freelance work in general.