I have been a mobile developer working with Android for about 6 years now. In that time, I have endured countless annoyances in the Android development space. I will endure them no more.
My complaints are:

1. Ridiculous build times. In what universe is it acceptable for us to wait 30 seconds for a build to complete. Yes, I've done all the optimisations mentioned on this page and then some. Don't even mention hot reload as it doesn't work fast enough or just does not work at all. Also, buying better hardware should not be a requirement to build a simple Android app, Xcode builds in 2 seconds with a 8GB Macbook Air. A Macbook Air!

2. IDE. Android Studio is a memory hog even if you throw 32GB of RAM at it. The visual editors are janky as hell. If you use Eclipse, you may as well just chop off your fingers right now because you will have no use for them after you try and build an app from afresh. I mean, just look at some of the posts in this subreddit where the common response is to invalidate caches and restart. That should only be used as a last resort, but it's thrown about like as if it solves everything. Truth be told, it's Gradle's fault. Gradle is so annoying I've dedicated the next point to it.

3. Gradle. I am convinced that Gradle causes 50% of an Android developer's pain. From the build times to the integration into various IDEs to its insane package management system. Why do I need to manually exclude dependencies from other dependencies, the build tool should just handle it for me. C'mon it's 2019. Gradle is so bad that it requires approx 54GB of RAM to work out that I have removed a dependency from the list of dependencies. Also I cannot work out what properties I need to put in what block.
4. API. Android API is over-bloated and hellish. How do I schedule a recurring notification? Oh use an AlarmManager. Yes you heard right, an AlarmManager... Not a NotificationManager because that would be too easy. Also has anyone ever tried running a long running task? Or done an asynchronous task? Or dealt with closing/opening a keyboard? Or handling clicks from a RecyclerView? Yes, I know Android Jetpack aims to solve these issues but over the years I have become so jaded by things that have meant to solve other broken things, that there isn't much hope for Jetpack in my mind 😤

5. API 2. A non-insignificant number of Android users are still on Jelly Bean or KitKat! That means we, as developers, have to support some of your shitty API decisions (Fragments, Activities, ListView) from all the way back then!

6. Not reactive enough. Android has support for Databinding recently but this kind of stuff should have been introduced from the very start. Look at React or Flutter as to how easy it is to make shit happen without any effort.

7. Layouts. What the actual hell is going on here. MDPI, XHDPI, XXHDPI, mipmap, drawable. Fuck it, just chuck it all in the drawable folder. Seriously, Android should handle this for me. If I am designing for a larger screen then it should be responsive. I don't want to deal with 50 different layouts spread over 6 different folders.

8. Permission system. Why was this not included from the very start? Rogue apps have abused this and abused your user's privacy and security. Yet you ban us and not them from the Play Store. What's going on? We need answers.

9. In Android, building an app took me 3 months and I had a lot of work left to do but I got so sick of Android dev I dropped it in favour of Flutter. I built the same app in Flutter and it took me around a month and I completed it all.
10. XML.

If you're a new dev, for the love of all that is good in this world, do NOT get into Android development. Start with Flutter or even iOS. On Flutter and build times are insanely fast and the hot reload is under 500ms constantly. It's a breath of fresh air and will save you a lot of headaches AND it builds for iOS flawlessly.

To the people who build Android, advocate it and work on it, sorry to swear, but fuck you! You have created a mess that we have to work with on a day-to-day basis only for us to get banned from the app store! You have sold us a lie that Android development is amazing with all the sweet treat names and conferences that look bubbly and fun. You have allowed to get it so bad that we can't target an API higher than 18 because some Android users are still using devices that support that!

End this misery. End our pain. End our suffering. Throw this abomination away like you do with some of your other projects and migrate your efforts over to Flutter. Please!

#NoToGoogleIO #AndroidSummitBoycott #FlutterDev #ReactNative

How many?

Fun fact: if you look at video release dates, Tom Scott learned how to fly a jetpack before learning how to ride a bike.

"Did you studied computers, right ?"
"Yes"
"Can you take a look on my dvd player? "

jetpack...

What the actual fuck is a "Happiness Engineer"? A client asked me to add a line of code on wp-config.php (WordPress) so that Jetpack will work:

define("OPTION", "setting for this option");

I added it at the top just after <?php. Somehow, the service isn't working so I asked the client to get in touch with Jetpack. Jetpack Happiness Engineer replies back that the location of the code is wrong and should be above:

/* That's all, stop editing! Happy publishing. */

and informed the client that Jetpack is working flawlessly.

I put back the line where I originally placed it and Jetpack is still working. Motherfu

Whats the state of mobile development skills demand atm?

Thinking of getting into crossplattform development with flutter or kotlin or enhance my dev skills in native android development (10years exp.) and create me a base project with jetpack compose.

Advice appreciated.

Got to love Google. This years IO 2018 has been one of my best. So many new tools for developers to become successful. Android & its new set of tools like Android Jetpack & the immense love Kotlin is receiving its gonna be an awesome year for Android programmers & Kotlin as a language.

First day at Jetpack Compose: Wow, how cool!
One week of Jetpack Compose: This preview never works right!
One month of Jetpack Compose: Damn! There's no mature component to this shit!
Two months of Jetpack Compose: There's no going back and start using embedded applications as intent.

Don't get into it.

That momento that you install jetpack plugin to monitorize your WordPress site, and everyday you receive an email saying it goes offline at 5am during 5-18 minutes...

i have a very casual and boring job. it's a b2b company and you can get an idea of how less work we get (or how fast i am) that it's day 1 of the sprint and i have almost finished all my tickets. my manager always praises me as someone fast whereas i see myself as pretty slow and this company even slower.

i feel like quitting, but the relax environment and stability of the company on paper makes me wonder of that would be a correct decision.
It's a deep tech company (not just meat e commerce or car rentals, a proper b2b analytics giant startup with good profitability) , our sdks are used by major startups and yet i find it boring.

I am an android dev who would love to stay at top of the game. my previous company used latest jetpack libraries, kotlin, modular architectures and stuff. everyday was a hectic chaos of life where there were deadlines, new requests coming in every few days and i was becoming the awesome fast android dev that i am now.

in this company there is no challenge for me.But the amount of free time has helped me grow beyond a single domain. i am currently hustling in 3 areas : my body( i started working out regularly, got my tummy under control), my technical skillset( started taking web dev classes) and my physical skillset (started taking driving and swimming lessons) . the amount of self growth time increases since company has a good leave and PTO policy

it all feels pretty good but the constant feeling of being left out from the android domain makes me think if i should give interviews. am i being stupid or what? my friends are all growing up with better salaries and packages. i am way better than some of them and equally capable as a few of them, so i sometimes feel being behind in finances too :/

Docker Compose, PHP Composer, Jetpack Compose...

What is the fetish with composers?

Why are devs at google making it hard for android developers? They release libraries so frequently and completely overhaul everything. It was fine till a limit. Now again they are releasing jetpack compose which is a completely new thing. I don't have problem learning new things but the rate at which they release new stuff is far swift than other frameworks. For example they release a new dependency injection hilt while recruiters still look for dagger 2. Android is just getting overwhelming. What are your thoughts?

How do y'all feel about Jetpack Compose? the new kotlin-declerative UI for android .-.

You may not be ready to accept what I'm about to say, but Subway Surfers is a true roguelike game.
Let's see:
- Procedurally generated levels — check.
- Grid-based layout — check. You have three predetermined lanes and seven height levels: sliding, running, jumping without boots (small obstacle height), jumping with boots (train height), jumping from train to bridges (bridge height) and jetpack.
- Permanent death — check. When you die, you start from the score of 0. This can be avoided with keys, but Pixel Dungeon features ankhs that resurrect you, and they can be purchased. Pixel Dungeon is undoubtably a true roguelike game, so if they can get away with it, Subway Surfers can too.

Yep.

Begin to hate Java, moving to kotlin soon . For android development at least with Jetpack compose. Java is deprecated in almost every API.

i have been watching some jetpack compose tutorials and trying to create projects with it. Its quite cool and looks very interesting. but wrti8 those modifiers seems like a great wastage of time :/
Also, i have an OCD of writing code in lesser number of lines , as much as possible . so i would rather prefer writing

val x = Modifier.function1().fun2().fun()

than

val x = Modifier
.function1()
.fun2()
.fun()

as long as my code line does not cross the 80 character limit guideline, and as long as it makes sense to not switch to a new line.

but IDE seems adamant on breaking those long modifier lines to weird indented codeblock, so its already getting very noring for me :/

Why the fuck would Google promote Jetpack Compose as a stable toolset when it doesn't even support a basic feature such as a scrollbar.
A. Fucking. Scrollbar.
LazyColumn can't even come close to being as powerful as Recyclerview.

Here's an idea, before launching something and touting it as something usable, and encouraging people to drop the old, battle tested tool for the new shiny one, how about you make sure the new doesn't lack features present in the old one?
Seems logical, right?

Methinks somebody was just looking for a promotion because, clearly, Jetpack Compose is a half-baked product.
Now, developers will have to suffer because project managers will read about the new framework and ask devs to use it, then wonder why the app is suffering.

This is my hell right now.
Android Jetpack compose Instrumentation test with koin di, mockito, coil in a module with 20 other modules.

"Cannot mock/spy coil imagerequest"

Whats yours?

does any one knoe how can hide multiple button with another button in jetpack compose?

I am trying to make a simple news app using jetpack compose but it throwing a error(
when I rerun the app it runs successfully but when I logged out and try to log in it throw the error)