Slow development milestones for Android have previously been blamed on Google’s $10m coding “prizefund” forcing app creation undercover; could the truth be that the platform is simply not ready for primetime release?  That’s the strident criticism from developer Adam MacBeth, who has found the SDK toolkit to be riddled with bugs, poorly implemented code and a general absence of support from Google themselves.

“Functionality is not there, is poorly documented or just doesn’t work. It’s clearly not ready for prime time” Adam MacBeth

While flaws and lacking written support in early software is perhaps to be expected, the reported absence of feedback from Google has some concerned:

“Google needs the developers to be happy with the SDK if it expects the platform to gain any legs in the market. If they can’t get applications to work because the coding is all messed up, Android might be a very short-lived experiment or fail to have the impact Google hopes for” Eric Zeman, InformationWeek

The WSJ appears to have more luck getting a comment from Google, however, with the company helming the Open Handset Alliance seemingly confident that this poor start will be forgotten as they refine the eventual broad release of the Android platform:

“Google said the software kit it released last month amounts to an “early look” designed specifically to get developers started as soon as possible and to elicit their feedback. The company said it is in the process of incorporating various suggestions into new tool kits” Scott Morrison, WSJ

Nonetheless, the criticism stands as a distinct contrast to recent praise of the Android platform in action, which a developer has described as “light and fast” as well as “a lot more put together than WM5.”  While this preliminary release may have been intended to whet the appetite of coders and publicise the platform, Google may need to step in with some damage limitation to avoid the lasting impression that Android is troublesome to work with.