B4A uses a different approach. It is not a complete pain once you learn how to work with the designer tools: variants, anchors, autoscale and designer script.
Note that if you prefer the "java way" then you can load XML layouts with the XmlLayoutBuilder library.
I'm sure that's the case too, unfortunately, I get memory loss side effects from tablets I take, which makes learning new things very difficult, and difficulty in remembering the old things I've learnt. Are there any examples of interfaces that use skinning and centering of a number of components together?