Android Developers Backstage

This episode is the first in the new mini-series “ADBC” on Jetpack Compose, hosted by Nick Butcher, in which we will dive deep into different topics in Android’s future UI toolkit.

This time, Nick and Chet talked with Adam Powell and Leland Richardson about the Compose compiler, the runtime, data flow, and that nifty feature where Compose knows when to call your Composable based on changes in data state.

Also check out:

Thinking in Compose

Compose State Guide

Compose State Codelab

Lifecycle of composables

Side-effects in Compose

Compose Learning Pathway

Adam: @adamwp

Leland: @intelligibabble

Nick: @crafty

Chet: @chethaase

Romain: @romainguy

Tor: @tornorbye

In this episode, we talk with Nat Duca and Sumir Kataria from the Android graphics team about the graphics stack -- covering shaders, GPUs, Vulkan, OpenGL, ANGLE, drivers, blur, pixels and of course Chet's favorite topic; colors. 

Hosts Tor, Chet and Romain on the top row and guests Nat and Sumir on the bottom row

If you're ever wanted to know how to pronounce "hwui", tune in!

Sumir: @SumirKodes

Nat: Link

Chet: @chethaase

Romain: @romainguy

Tor: @tornorbye

Cowardly abandoned by Chet and Romain, Tor faces three guests alone. Jeffrey van Gogh, Ting-Yuan Huang, and Yigit Boyar join Tor to talk about Kotlin Symbol Processing (KSP), a new, faster, and better tool to replace annotation processors. You will learn how KSP works, what it can do, why it was created, and how it is used in the Room Jetpack library.

Tor, Ting-Yuan, Jeffrey, and Yigit, all looking amazingly happy to discuss annotation and symbol processing

KSP announcement

KSP GitHub project

How to get started with KSP

Libraries with KSP support

Jetpack Room

Jeffrey: @jvgogh

Yigit: @yigitboyar

Tor: @tornorbye

This time, Tor, Chet, and Romain talked with Rohit Sathyanarayana and Florina Muntenescu about the DataStore library. DataStore is the replacement for SharedPreferences, being better for many reasons (it's asynchronous and avoids blocking the UI thread, it is type-safe). It not only has a similar/simple key-value pair API like SharedPreferences, but also has more powerful API as well. It's currently in alpha, but look for it to be the recommended approach soon as it approaches stable.

Florina, Romain, Chet, Daniel (ADB
audio producer, in person!), Tor, and Rohi

Article: Using DataStore in Kotlin Serialization
Docs: Docs
Codelab: Preferences Datastore codelab
Codelab: Proto Datastore codelab

Florina: @FMuntenescu
Rohit: @rohitsat123
Chet: @chethaase
Romain: @romainguy
Tor: @tornorbye

In this episode, Romain, Chet and Tor sit down with Brian Carlstrom and Nicolas Geoffray to discuss their work on ART (the Android Runtime). Brian and Nicolas describe the early prototypes and bringup of ART, getting it production ready, as well as recent developments such as cloud profiles.

Chet, Brian and Romain on the top row, and Tor and Nicolas below

Brian: https://carlstrom.com
Chet: @chethaase
Romain: @romainguy
Tor: @tornorbye

Chet and Romain host Chris Lacy, a long time independent Android developer. In this episode, Chris explains how he decides what apps to build, how he used various platform APIs to create innovative applications like LinkBubble, and what challenges he faces.

Chet, Chris and Romain

Chris's apps include:
SwirlWalls, a live wallpaper
ActionLauncher, a replacement launcher

By the way, Chris is looking to hire an Android developer. If interested, you can reach him at youshouldhireme@actionlauncher.com.

Chris: @chrismlacy
Chet: @chethaase
Romain: @romainguy
Tor: @tornorbye