Finally, the day arrived. One week before I had no plans to be in Berlin, nor to attend the event. But there I was, happy to be there on the first DroidCon after the pandemic.
Why Projects Succeed
Lessons Learned from the Android OS
by Chet Haase
I really enjoy each talk given by Chet, the podcast and his books, but is always nice to be able to see him in person. He emanates energy and good vibes.
The talk goes in the same direction of the book, (androids) but he summarizes it in less than 40 minutes. If you hadn’t read it yet, do it. It is a fantastic book, and all the benefits go to charity!
I would say that my understanding of why android succeeded is because they had the right people working on it, all of them sharing the same idea and all of them working really hard on the same goal. Decisions being made and encapsulating the devs from the outside noise was also really important. But it is also important, like all the developers involved in the project said, “Be at the right time in the right place.”
Here my review on the book.
KMP for Mobile Developers
by Enrique López Mañas
An interesting talk about how KMP works for swift and how the iOS could profit from it. I am not an iOS developer, but I’ve developed an iOS App from scratch for my previous company, and since I love Kotlin and the idea of one day being able to have a multiplatform App built only in Kotlin, I decided to see how this looks for Swift.
Building a Production-Ready Chat SDK Using Jetpack Compose
by Filip Babić & Márton Braun
It was amazing to see a production ready SDK working with compose. My first encounter with compose was two years ago on the Kotlin Conf, in a workshop done by Sean McQuillan. I was excited about it, but I must say it was too soon then.
Now is different, compose is no longer alpha, or beta, is production ready, already version 1. And I had the opportunity to get my hands on it, and it’s amazing.
The talk was about how easy is to customize composable components, what challenges they met along the way.
Common pitfalls/issues in Compose
- Thinking imperatively: you can’t “update” the UI or set listeners
- Hardcoding customization: using modifiers too much in the internal code
- Migrating everything: migration should be done slowly
- Lack of examples: there aren’t too many examples out there
They provided some links for testing the code and play with the demos.
Stay tuned for a post about it.
A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Compose Compiler:
Composers, Compiler Plugins, and Snapshots
by Jossi Wolf & Amanda Hinchman-Dominguez
Really cool, advance, talk about how compose works under the hood.
It is fascinating to see a full-room for a talk that takes a new API (Jetpack Compose) that simplifies UI development in android, and tries to explain the attendees the complexity behind. We engineer really love to understand how things work. I would have given these two the opportunity to talk for 40 more minutes. They know a lot, and they explain everything so clear that you don’t need to process it. Good job! The most interesting part for me was to find out about the State capture in Compose. Snapshots!!
Becoming a mentor, why and how?
by Florian Mierzejewski
Really cool talk about how to mentor a mentee, when this mentee is a junior developer. Really happy to see that what I am already doing as part of my job, is the same other companies, and other people more expert in mentoring, are doing.
Why mentoring?
- Mentees have a fresh outlook on the project
- Helping the mentee by serving as a link to the rest of the team
- Industry-wide lack of developers, worse at the senior level
- Giving back to the community
- Building long-lasting professional relationships
End of Day One
The first day ended, like always, with a Party and some Beers. Nice ending for a great day!
Continue to Day Two & Three
Here you can continue reading my review of Day Two & Three