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Android Developers Backstage

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Chet, Nick, Clara, Leland, Tor, Adam, and Romain.So many guests!This time, Tor, Romain, and Chet chatted with a few people on the Jetpack Compose team, about... Jetpack Compose!Compose hit Beta a couple of weeks ago (don't believe me? Check out the recent Android show on Compose Show!), so we took the opportunity to talk to some of the people that have helped build it. We talk about the current state of the library, but also about some of the design decisions that went into developing the APIs and functionality.(Note on the audio quality for this episode - it turns out that mixing so many people, all of whom recorded themselves separately using very different hardware and setups was... tricky. It's listenable, but maybe a tad below the level we shoot for. Blame the pandemic. I do.)
Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly.#TheAndroidShow: Jetpack ComposeThe Jetpack Compose site (overview, tutorial, docs, samples, and more)Chet: @chethaase
Romain: @romainguy
Tor: @tornorbyeNick: @craftyClara: @clarabayarriLeland: @intelligibabbleAdam: @adamwpThanks to our audio engineer, Dustin Elm, who has handled all of our audio mixingfor the last couple of years, including the tricky part of mixing all of our remote-recorded episodes, like this one.Dustin's moving on to (greener? softer? louder?) pastures, so we'll be usinga new, exciting process for mixing future episodes. Thanks, Dustin!
What does a podcast look like? We don't know,so here's a picture of the podcast's websiteWe want to hear from you! In this episode,Tor, Romain, and Chet talk about what they could do — or not do —to improve Android Developers Backstage.Please check our survey and let us know how you would like to see this podcast evolve. We recommend you first listen to the podcast to get the full context for some of the questions in the survey.Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly.Chet: @chethaaseRomain: @romainguyTor: @tornorbyeThanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
It's history time! Or even [pre-]ART History time!We didn't take a picture this time.Please imagine what we looked like.This time, Tor, Romain, and Chet were joined by Dan Bornstein, one of the early members of the Android team. Dan joined in 2005 to create a runtime for Android, which became Dalvik.We talked about some of the early placeholder VMs used while Dalvik was coming online, some of the design decisions for Dalvik (like its register-based vs. stack-based implementation), and nice techy details about runtimes, garbage collectors, and optimizations.
Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly.Chet: @chethaase
Romain: @romainguy
Tor: @tornorbyeDan: @danfuzz
Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
Top row: Chet, Romain, Rob.Bottom row: Wale, Tor.In this episode, we chat with Wale Ogunwale and Rob Carr from the Android Framework team about the Window Manager.Tune in to learn about the evolution of the window manager, the distinction between System UI and the window manager, implementation challenges and recent architectural changes.
Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly.Chet: @chethaase
Romain: @romainguy
Tor: @tornorbyeThanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
This episode is dedicated to the memory of our dear friend and colleague, Carl Quinn.Our last episode of the year arrives just in time for the holiday season. In this episode, Tor, Chet, and Romain go over everything that happened in 2020, both good and bad. We look back at how conferences have been impacted by the pandemic, why Android Studio changed its versioning scheme, the new tools and libraries that were released, etc.We would like to thank all of our listeners for their continued support. We'll be back in early 2021 with more episodes and new guests!
Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly.Chet: @chethaase
Romain: @romainguy
Tor: @tornorbye
Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
Romain, Tor, and Chet talked with Jesse Wilson from Square. Jesse has worked on several popular open-source libraries, including OkHttp, Okio, and [Ok]Moshi. We talk about those libraries, and others, and about Android, library, framework and Kotlin development. And about that nasty habit some engineers have of turning a feature request or minor annoyance into a project of creating a new open-source library instead.Favorite quote, from Jesse:"I started with 2k. Someone told me 8k was faster."
Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly.
Links:OkHttpOkHttp Kotlin ReleaseOkioOkio Buffer.kt internalsGraalVMJesse: @jessewilsonChet: @chethaase
Romain: @romainguy
Tor: @tornorbye
Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
Chet, Colin, Romain, and TorThis week, Tor, Romain and Chet are joined by a special guest: Colin White from Instacart.Colin is the author of Coil, a popular image loading library backed by Kotlin and Kotlin Coroutines. In this episode, Colin explains what Coil is, how and why it was created, etc.
Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly.
Links:CoilCoil on GitHubThe feature request Romain filedAnd the PR to implement that feature requestColin: @colinwhiChet: @chethaase
Romain: @romainguy
Tor: @tornorbye
Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
Chet, Dustin, Chris, and Romain.(Tor not pictured. Because he wasn't there)Romain and Chet talked with Dustin Lam and Chris Craik from the Toolkit team about Paging3.Paging3 (currently in alpha) is a complete rewrite of (wait for it...) Paging2, using Kotlin, coroutines, and Flow for optimal implementation and APIs. (But note that there are also APIs for developers using the Java programming language and/or RxJava, so take your pick). We talk about Paging, the asynchronous work that made coroutines an obvious choice for the implementation, recent and future features, and API design in general.
Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly.
Links:AndroidX Paging libraryBug bounty hotlist!Dustin: @itsdustinlamChris: @chris_craik
Chet: @chethaase
Romain: @romainguy
Tor: @tornorbye
Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
Top row: Tor and RomainBottom row: Ryan and Chet
In this episode, Chet, Romain and Tor talk with Ryan Mitchell from the Android Framework Team.We cover the Android resources in general and the aapt2 tool in particular.
Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly.
Chet: @chethaase
Romain: @romainguy
Tor: @tornorbye
Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
Top row: Chet, Joshua and Romain.Bottom row: Renaud and Tor
In this episode, Chet, Romain and Tor talk with Renaud Paquay and Joshua Duong from the Android Studio and Android Emulator teams.We cover the new ADB over WiFi feature in Android 11, and the Android Studio support for pairing and connecting.
Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly.
Links
https://developer.android.com/studio/command-line/adb#connect-to-a-device-over-wi-fi-android-11+
Renaud: /u/adt_renaud
Joshua: /u/joshuaduong
Chet: @chethaase
Romain: @romainguy
Tor: @tornorbye
Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
Sean McQuillan and I talked with Nicolas Roard and John Hoford about MotionEditor, which went stable recently in Android Studio 4.0. But as long as we were talking about that tool, we also talked extensively about MotionLayout in general as well as ConstraintLayout, new features like Flow, the difficulties of animating text properties, and more.Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly.
Links
MotionTags screencast seriesMotionEditor guideMotionEditor release articleConstraintLayout guideConstraintLayout 2.0 article
John: @johnhofordNicolas: @camaelon
Chet: @chethaase
Tor: @tornorbye
Romain: @romainguy
Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
The real star of the show: Jetpack Compose
This week, after a long series of developer previews, we are celebrating the release of Jetpack Compose alpha. In this episode, Clara Bayarri, Matvei Malkov, and Anna-Chiara Bellini are joining Chet and Romain to talk about this milestone. You will learn more about what does the alpha mean to the team, where did Compose come from, how the team approaches API design, some of the challenges behind building a new UI toolkit, and much more.
Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly.
Links
Jetpack Compose
Tutorials and codelabs
Android Studio Setup
Samples on GitHub
Thinking in Compose (video)
Chet: @chethaase
Tor: @tornorbye
Romain: @romainguy
Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
Dan (played by an icon), Greg, and
a tiny Romain in the upper right
This time, Romain was hosting all on his own for this conversation about game technology with Greg Hartrell, product manager for games on Play/Android, and Dan Galpin, developer advocate for games on Android. They talked about recent developments and offerings for game developers, including the Android development plugin for Visual Studio, other specialized tools for game developers, and new offerings from the team like Android Asset Delivery and Android App Bundle for distribution.
Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly.
Links
Build Games for Android
Android Game Dev Show
Greg: @ghartrell
Dan: @dagalpin
Chet: @chethaase
Tor: @tornorbye
Romain: @romainguy
Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
Eric, Dany, and Romain. Chet not represented to hide the
confused look he had on his face during the entire recording.
We're injecting dependencies! In this episode, Chet and Romain are joined by Daniel Santiago from Jetpack, and Eric Chang from Dagger to talk about Hilt. Hilt builds on Dagger for form Android's new recommended way to perform dependency injection. And it's also a great opportunity for Chet and Romain to display their lack of knowledge in that space.
Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly.
Links
Dagger.dev
Hilt on dagger.dev
Introduction to Hilt by Dany
Dependency injection on Android
Chet: @chethaase
Tor: @tornorbye
Romain: @romainguy
Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
Mads, Chet and Tor
In this episode, Chet and Tor talk with Mads Ager from the Android Studio compilers team. We cover a number of subjects, from r8 and d8 optimizations and resource shrinking to work on the Kotlin compiler front- and back-end, as well as the new Kotlin symbol processor.
Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly.
Links
R8/D8: https://r8.googlesource.com/r8
KSP: https://github.com/android/kotlin/tree/ksp/libraries/tools/kotlin-symbol-processing-api
Kotlin: https://github.com/JetBrains/kotlin/
Mads: @madsager
Chet: @chethaase
Tor: @tornorbye
Romain: @romainguy
Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
Tor, Romain, Sara, Philip, and a little tiny Chet top-right
In this episode, Tor, Chet, and Romain talk with Sara N-Marandi and Philip Moltmann from the Android framework team about some of the new permissions changes in Android 11. We talk about why these changes were made, how to use them correctly in your code, and how things actually work on the inside.
Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly.
Links
Developer Guide: Request App Permissions
Video: Developing with the latest privacy changes in Android 11
Video: All things privacy in Android 11
Chet: @chethaase
Tor: @tornorbye
Romain: @romainguy
Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
Hoi and Matej in the top row, Chet and Tor below
In this episode, Chet and Tor talk with Hoi Lam and Matej Pfajfar about machine learning on Android. Tune in to learn about ML Kit, TensorFlow Lite, transfer learning, federated learning, ML model binding, the Android Neural Networks API, and more!
Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly.
Links
ML Kit: g.co/mlkit
TensorFlow Lite Model Maker: https://www.tensorflow.org/lite/tutorials/model_maker_image_classification
Android Studio 4.1 with ML Binding - https://developer.android.com/studio/preview/features#tensor-flow-lite-models
People + AI Guidebook, suitable for SWE, Designers and PMs https://pair.withgoogle.com/guidebook/
Material Design Showcase Sample https://github.com/googlesamples/mlkit/tree/master/android/material-showcase
Hoi: @hoitab
Chet: @chethaase
Tor: @tornorbye
Romain: @romainguy
Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
Romain, Tor's large head and bad framing, Chet's
little tiny picture top-right, Julia, and Stefan
It's all about people! In this episode, Tor, Chet and Romain are joined by Julia Reynolds and Stefan Franks from the System UI team to have a discussion about conversations. We also converse about things unrelated to conversations.
Starting with Android 11, conversation notifications now appear in a dedicated space at the top of the notifications shade. These notifications come with specific actions like opening a bubble or setting a reminder. Tune in to learn more about this new people-forward design.
Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly.
Links
Android 11 Beta
Notifications
Chet: @chethaase
Tor: @tornorbye
Romain: @romainguy
Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
Artur, Chet, Mady, Romain and Tor
In this episode, Romain, Chet and Tor talked with Mady Melor and Artur Tsurkan from the System UI team about... Bubbles!
Bubbles let users easily multi-task from anywhere on their device, and facilitates real-time communication using a chat application.
Tune in to learn more about this new API in Android 11!
Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly.
Links
https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/bubbles
Chet: @chethaase
Tor: @tornorbye
Romain: @romainguy
Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
Romain, Chet, Alan, Nick, and a little tiny Tor
in the upper-right corner
In this episode, Romain, Chet and Tor talked with Nick Anthony and Alan Viverette from the AndroidX team about... AndroidX. And Jetpack. And androidx. (Spoiler alert: androidx is the set of libraries. Jetpack is that... plus opinionated guidance. AndroidX is the name of the team that ships this stuff).
We also talked about the release cadence (currently every two weeks, up from every-several-months a couple of years ago), the standards for release naming/versioning, API standards, and everything else in the world of AndroidX infrastructure and release.
Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly.
Links
AndroidX releases
Alan: /u/alanviverette
Chet: @chethaase
Tor: @tornorbye
Romain: @romainguy
Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.




