Issue #258

May 21st, 2017

Articles & Tutorials

 
DebugPort 2.0 (medium.com)

In this post Jason Feinstein introduces DebugPort 2.0. DebugPort is a SQLite REPL to debug your app during runtime.

 
Understanding Law of Demeter (medium.com)

For a good software design, it is very important to have “loosely coupled” classes. Loosely coupling improves testability and components can be replaced easier. But sometimes the concept is kinda hard to grasp on. In this post Ankit Sinhal will show you some examples and how to apply law of demeter.

 
Object Oriented Tricks: #6 SLAP your functions (hackernoon.com)

Nice reminder by Arun Sasidharan to keep your functions short and readable: Extract functions at comment blocks.

 
link image   Android and Architecture (android-developers.googleblog.com)

Google announced a guide to Android app architecture along with a preview of Architecture Components. Rather than reinventing the wheel, we're also recognizing the work done by popular Android libraries.

 
Why Kotlin? (blog.danlew.net)

Dan Lew's short post on the many myriad Kotlin features enable more concise and understandable code than Java without sacrificing performance or safety.

 
Android app architecture reloaded (blog.israelferrer.com)

Great writeup by Israel Ferrer on new architecture strategies and how to avoid the the burrito pattern.

 
My take on“Architecture Components” (medium.com)

Yonatan V. Levin had early access to the new Google “Architecture components”  and ported an MVP app to these new components.

 
Kotlin: Uncovered - Part 1 (collectiveidea.com)

Victoria Gonda teaches the basics of Kotlin by decompiling the generated JVM code to compare to Java implementations.

 
Kotlin: Uncovered - Part 2 (collectiveidea.com)

Victoria Gonda teaches the basics of Kotlin by decompiling the generated JVM code to compare to Java implementations.

 
link image   ConstraintLayout.com (blog.stylingandroid.com)

Mark Allison announces ConstraintLayout.com, a community-sourced documentation hub all about ConstraintLayout.

 
Looking at Room and LiveData - Part 1 (riggaroo.co.za)

Rebecca Franks builds an app that is a countdown to different events that you add to the app, using the MVVM pattern and the new Android Architecture components.

 
Room — Getting Started (medium.com)

Room, a persistence library, is part of the new Architecture components for Android. Tony Owen shows examples of its use in Kotlin and RxJava.

 
Android Architecture Components meets AndroidThings (blog.blundellapps.co.uk)

Paul Blundell refactors the Android Things Edison candle sample code using the new Android Architecture components.

 
Generating Kotlin code with KotlinPoet (medium.com)

Jake Wharton announces KotlinPoet, a library for generating Kotlin code!

 
Why you should totally switch to Kotlin (medium.com)

Great list of arguments by Magnus Vinther why you should totally switch to Kotlin.

 
30 New Android Libraries (medium.com)

This list, compiled by Michal Bialas, of 30 new Android libraries which have been released since March 2017. They are not ranked in any order and it's a complete subjective choice.

 

Sponsored

 
link image   Embed in-app support with the Zendesk kit on Fabric (www.fabric.io)

Get started with in-app support by using the new Zendesk kit on Fabric. With Zendesk's Mobile SDK, you can join Rovio Games and Swiftkey in bringing rich, native, in-app support to your app quickly and easily. Try it out.

 
link image   Buddybuild - a CI & CD built for Android developers (www.buddybuild.com)

Buddybuild is the continuous integration & deployment platform trusted by companies like Slack, Meetup, Firefox to reliably build, test & deploy their mobile apps. It saves you the time required to setup & operate a CI / CD system so you can stay focused on crafting apps users love. See why 1000s of companies love buddybuild.

 

Design

 
link image   Redesigning Android Emoji (medium.com)

At I/O 2017, Google announced a full redesign of the Android emoji font

 

Jobs

 
Sr Mobile Software Engineer in Test (Salt Lake City, Utah OR Remote)

Instructure is looking for a remote Sr Mobile SDET to scale our iOS EarlGrey and Android Espresso automation in the cloud. Canvas, including our mobile apps, is open source on GitHub.

 
Senior Lead Android Developer (London)

Once is a dating app with 4M+ dls and 8m EUR in funding. We're looking for a strong lead developer focused on continuous delivery and quality. You are fluent in RxJava, Dagger 2 and have the will to build a great product.Come join a cool start-up located in Angel and help bring it to the next level.

 

Libraries & Code

 
android-architecture-counter-sample (github.com)

Here's a simple sample app by Dan Lew that demonstrates some parts of Android Architecture Components. Plus, it's entirely written in Kotlin!

 
kotlinpoet (github.com)

KotlinPoet is a Kotlin and Java API for generating .kt source files

 
memechat (github.com)

An example of a meme-enabled chat app on Flutter, using Firebase, Google Sign In, and device camera integration. MemeChat contains platform-specific elements for Android and iOS.

 

News

 
What’s New in Android: O Developer Preview 2 & More (android-developers.googleblog.com)

Google released of O Developer Preview 2, the first beta-quality candidate, available to test on your primary phone or tablet.

 
Everything new in the Google Play Console (android-developers.googleblog.com)

Google announced new and improved features to help you improve your app's performance and quality, and grow your business on Google Play.

 
link image   Android Architecture Components (developer.android.com)

A new collection of libraries that help you design robust, testable, and maintainable apps. Start with classes for managing your UI component lifecycle and handling data persistence

 
New complications tools and watch friendly UI library (android-developers.googleblog.com)

Google released a suite of complication API tools, to make it easier for developers to add complication support to their watch faces, and a new Wear UI library, to help developers build watch friendly user interfaces

 
Android Announces Support for Kotlin (android-developers.googleblog.com)

The Android team is excited to announce that they are officially adding support for the Kotlin programming language.

 
Android Instant Apps is open to all developers (android-developers.googleblog.com)

Google has opened Android Instant Apps to all developers, so anyone can build and publish an instant app.

 
Android Developers Blog: Android Studio 3.0 Canary 1 (android-developers.googleblog.com)

Android Studio 3.0 includes three major features: a new suite of app performance profiling tools to quickly diagnose performance issues, support for the Kotlin programming language, and increased Gradle build speeds for large sized app projects

 
Actions on Google challenge (developers.google.com)

Turn your inspiration into action by building apps for the Google Assistant on Google Home and enter to win more than 20 prizes.

 

Videos & Podcasts

 
link image   Chicago Roboto 2017 Session Videos (chicagoroboto.com)

Video recordings of all the presentations from Chicago Roboto 2017.

 
Android Developers Backstage: Kotlin! (androidbackstage.blogspot.com)

Chet and Tor talk with Romain Guy and Yigit Boyar about Kotlin, Android's new officially supported language.

 
Google I/O 2017 - All Sessions (www.youtube.com)

A playlist of all sessions from Google I/O

 
Architecture Components: Improve Your App's Design (www.youtube.com)

Build robust Android apps using the new architecture components. New classes and interfaces, such as ViewModel, LiveData and LifecycleObserver, make it easy to access and manage the Activity and Fragment Lifecycle.

 

Events

 
Android Hackathon at RUB in Bochum - Germany (www.eventbrite.com)

There will be an Android Hackathon at the Ruhr University in Bochum. It's a free event so be there and create a legendary app.