Fragmented - An Android Developer Podcast

In this edition of Fragmented, we're thrilled to host Ishan Khanna, a software engineer at Tinder who possesses great enthusiasm for feature flags and A/B testing. Donn discusses why he invited Ishan on the show, highlighting Ishan's passion for feature flagging and A/B testing. The conversation kicks off with an insightful story from Ishan about feature flagging at Booking.com, leading to a discussion on the difference between A/B...

In this episode, we talk to, Siggi Jonsson. Siggi helps guide us through the complex and often confusing world of Android app modularization. Our conversation will begin by shedding light on the importance of modularization, what triggers the need for breaking projects into multiple modules, and how modularization relates to team size, feature teams, and code ownership. This discussion is aimed at demystifying how and why developer...

In this podcast episode, we have the pleasure to host Fred Porciúncula, a Google Developer Expert (GDE) known for his work with Kotlin Inject and his invaluable contributions to the Android development community. Fred offers his expertise on Dependency Injection (DI), Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP), and how they intersect.

We kick off the conversation by discussing Dependency Injection (DI), its importance, and the options available to ...

In this episode, Donn and Kaushik talk to an old friend of the show, Colin White, about Treehouse, a combination of the Redwood and Zipline libraries.

Colin is a Staff Engineer at Cash App (Block).

Redwood is a multiplatform Compose library that allows you to target multiple UI toolkits on various native platforms. Ultimately this allows you to share presentation logic.

Zipline is a multiplatform JavaScript engine for Android, iOS, an...

In this episode, Donn and Kaushik announce that they are steering the podcast back into Android waters. In other words, the Fragmented Podcast is returning to its roots ... we're back to being a 100% Android Development focused show.

We're glad to have you as a listener, here's to the future of Android Development. 🚀

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In this episode, Donn and Kaushik talk to long-time friend Dan Lew about his recent career switch from Android developer to TypeScript/Node.js/Progressive Web App Developer (and more).

It's an interesting discussion that covers ...

• Why Dan decided to leave the Android world
• The challenges he faced when he moved from one tech stack to another
• How to prepare for a big change like this (mentally, financially, etc.)
• How to create the li...

In this episode, Donn and Kaushik talk about one of the age old bike shedding topics - code formatting, and how you can solve it with automation and tools.

Code formatting can turn into an endless debate amongst peers and teams, and what Kaushik and Donn have found is that this can be delegated to a tool and automated. Freeing you and your team of having to worry about proper indentation, bracket placement, etc. By relying on a well...

In this episode, Donn and Kaushik talk about the fear of shipping, some impostor syndrome and how it contributes to uncertainty and doubt in your capabilities as a software developer.

Recently Donn embarked on a mission to come up with an idea and ship it within 24 hours (which he did do). The end result was a net benefit of confidence, speed and skill acquisition. This helped reduce any doubt, uncertainty and ultimately fear of shi...

In this episode, Donn and Kaushik talk about 5 new-ish Kotlin constructs that you might not be aware of.

The constructs that they talk about are:

1. fun interface (SAM - Single Abstract Method), and they juxtapose them vs function types
2. type alias
3. import alias
4. value class
5. data object

You'll learn what they are, how you can use them and when or when you might not want to use them, and more. We hope you enjoy.

Links

• Kaushik...

In this short episode, Donn talks about the CODEOWNERS file and how it can help you ensure teams review the code that they are responsible for before merging.

The CODEOWNERS file is a file that you drop into the root of your project (or into the /docs or .github/ directory) that tells GitHub (or whatever git host you're using) to require a review for any code changes that match the patterns as defined in the CODEOWNERS file. You'll ...

In this episode, Donn talks about the tips and tricks he's used over the last 20 years of consulting, freelancing and working full time to find jobs and new opporftunities. We're hoping some of these tips help those affected by the recent tech layoffs.

These are tips that Donn still uses to this day. They work wonders to help you land a job quickly when you do them.

The tips:

1. Update your LinkedIn Profile and Build a Resume with th...

In this episode, Donn and Kaushik talk about their thoughts on Jetpack Compose and XML for Android layouts and which one you should learn first.

As with every conversation in tech ... it depends on what you're trying to do, where you are at in your career, what the company is doing and more. Donn and Kaushik go into both of their thought processes around Compose and XML and when you should learn one or the other, or even both and wh...

In this episode, Donn and Kaushik talk about the thought of having a terminal for Android.

Have you ever wished you could whip up a quick script to get the current location of a device, add it to cron and do some automated tasks on your phone? Wouldn't it be nice to have low level access to your system like you do on your desktop?

In this episode, Donn and Kaushik dive into the details of what that might look like and why they find i...

In this episode, Kaushik goes solo and interviews Ben Orenstein. Ben is a prolific Ruby developer, an amazing conference speaker, an ardent vim-ster, and now the CEO of Tuple.

Kaushik has been a big fan of Ben's work and was super stoked to talk to Ben and pick his brains on a host of topics: starting the company Tuple, pair programming in general, learning different programming languages and technology, giving better conference tal...

In this episode, Donn and Kaushik talk about how many Android applications seem to suffer from the disease of over-architecture while neglecting the product (UI/UX) itself. They discuss why this is deterimental to the user experience in the Android platform and how they've seen it evolve over the years. They attempt to provide some thoughful ideas on how this can be rectified in the future and more.

We're looking for your feedback o...

In this episode, Donn and Kaushik talk to John Rodriguez (jrod) about the Paparazzi library which allows you to perform UI screenshot testing on Android without an emulator or physical device.

They talk to John about what screenshot testing is, why it's important, advantages and it's disadvantages as well. You'll learn how to use Paparazzi and how it can test various different screen configurations without having to run an emulator....

In this episode Donn and Kaushik talk about frustration, finding "flow state" and how it's known as "the madness" and how to deal with it.

We originally were going to talk about an other topic, but during the off air banter Donn brought up how he was frustrated with losing/burning so much time on a task that he had for his side project. He only meant to spend a little bit of time on it and then spent WAY more time than he meant to. ...

In this episode, Donn and Kaushik talk to Android GDE Vinay Gaba about learning Jetpack Compose.

They talk about how to learn how to use Jetpack Compose by example (and Vinay's excellent talk by the same name). How to use Jetpackcompose.app to help you find the right Jetpack Compose component and how to use ShowKase to organize discover and visualize your Jetpack Compose Elements. 

We then dive into why someone might want to learn Je...

In this episode Donn talks about that pit of the stomach feeling we all get when we feel like we should know something but we  don't. It's that voice in our head as developers that makes you feel like an idiot even when you're not.

Donn gives examples of how even senior engineers are subject to this feeling and how they are often the ones to not speak up about it simply because of their experience level and seniority. 

This episode t...