Android MVI Simplified

No libraries needed, just MVI

Android MVI Simplified

 Posted on 14 August, 2019  |  16 minutes (3301 words)

Why am I here? When I first started jumping into MVI and learning about it, there were few if any sources that I remember being complete enough for me to implement the pattern on my own. I don't like that. I could understand the benefits of it, but couldn't picture how it would look in production without a basic understanding. I want to solve that problem for the next person, so let's build an MVI app with only the libraries available in a new Android Studio project. [Read More]
architecture  jetpack  android  kotlin 

Why Kotlin? An Introduction. (Part 6)

Extensions

Why Kotlin? An Introduction. (Part 6)

 Posted on 07 June, 2018  |  2 minutes (287 words)

Tags: kotlin  android  intro  extensions 

This post is going to be a short but sweet one as I introduce the power of Kotlin extensions! Kotlin extensions allow you to simply extend the functionality of a given object. Say for some reason you're developing an Android app and find yourself passing around an instance of context a lot to get a simple desired result. As everyone (should) know, passing around an instance of context is dangerous. It can lead to memory leaks and makes your application more coupled, complicating testing. [Read More]
kotlin  android  intro  extensions 

Why Kotlin? An Introduction. (Part 5)

Jumps

Why Kotlin? An Introduction. (Part 5)

 Posted on 05 May, 2018  |  6 minutes (1066 words)

Tags: kotlin  android  intro  jumps 

It has been a little too long since my last post, but it's been a busy couple of months as I've been pushing hard to get some of my side projects moving along. Be on the lookout in the future as I plan to start going into more Android focused posts. If you're familiar with C your mind probably just jumped (pun intended) to a bad place. Don't worry though, Kotlin's implementation isn't anything as divisive as Dijkstra's or Rubin's arguments. [Read More]
kotlin  android  intro  jumps 

Why Kotlin? An Introduction. (Part 4)

Back to the good: Control Flow

Why Kotlin? An Introduction. (Part 4)

 Posted on 16 March, 2018  |  5 minutes (973 words)

We're going back to some of the good stuff right now. Control flow! Last week was a little more ranty, with a little less real content than I like, so I'm going to try to put a little more content in this week. ZZZzzzzz…. We'll get the boring stuff out of the way first… What's the same in Kotlin as in Java? Most of it… While and Do While still doing the same thing Kotlin: [Read More]
kotlin  android  intro  control flow 

Why Kotlin? An Introduction. (Part 3)

Error Handling: Something went wrong...

Why Kotlin? An Introduction. (Part 3)

 Posted on 09 March, 2018  |  5 minutes (904 words)

Lets follow up the discussion about nullability and talk about error handling in Kotlin. Syntactically, the differences from Java are pretty nominal, except for one pretty major key difference that I'll get to in just a second. First some code to demonstrate how similar Kotlin Exceptions are to Java's Exception handling: fun doSomething(data : String) { if(data.contains("test")) { throw IllegalStateException("Test!") } } fun main() { try { doSomething("testData") } catch (e : Exception) { // This will always get called because an exception is thrown if a String containing "test" is passed to doSomething(. [Read More]
kotlin  technical  intermediate  android  tutorial  intro  exceptions 

Why Kotlin? An Introduction. (Part 2)

java.lang.NullPointerException at Main.subTitle(Main.java:847)

Why Kotlin? An Introduction. (Part 2)

 Posted on 04 March, 2018  |  7 minutes (1347 words)

In the first part of this series I stated I'd very likely start all my new Android projects in Kotlin. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Java, but why would I make such a bold claim? The answer is null. Or more specifically, the explicit detraction of the use of null that Kotlin promotes. Kotlin has some nice features, but its handling of null variables is what hooked me. [Read More]
kotlin  technical  intermediate  android  tutorial  intro 

Why Kotlin? An Introduction. (Part 1)

Because it isn't just a fad anymore

Why Kotlin? An Introduction. (Part 1)

 Posted on 02 March, 2018  |  3 minutes (599 words)

Tags: kotlin  intro  note  android 

The Awakening When Kotlin was announced as a first class Android language at Google I/O in 2017, I like many Android developers, was skeptical. As an ardent user of Jetbrains products for a number of years now I haven't been oblivious to Kotlin, but I've only recently begun to take Kotlin seriously. In fact, after developing CoinWatch in Kotlin, I don't know that I'm going to start another Android project in Java (willingly) ever again. [Read More]
kotlin  intro  note  android 

My Terminal

The key to the castle...

My Terminal

 Posted on 28 February, 2018  |  8 minutes (1573 words)

Tags: terminal  tmux  fish  shell  easy  technical 

Everyone has their preferences, and I have mine. As I start the blog I'm finding myself setting up a laptop I haven't used in a while. So I have to do some configuration before I get started. I figured it might be helpful to some people to share how I prefer to configure my terminal on a new system. First off, I prefer to develop on Ubuntu. I'll bounce between various operating systems depending on the project I'm working on, but I find the majority of my work is easier to accomplish in Ubuntu. [Read More]
terminal  tmux  fish  shell  easy  technical 

A quick note...

 Posted on 28 February, 2018  |  1 minutes (183 words)

Tags: note  general 

To precede my first “technical” post I'd like to mention something that I intend to do with this blog… get you reading the documentation for what you're doing. I'll try to provide as many links to actual/additional documentation as I can, but I'd like to avoid recreating steps and documentation that already exists. This isn't because I want you the reader to spend countless hours understanding every minute detail of what you're using, it's because documentation changes. [Read More]
note  general 

Where to from here?

I just started a blog!

 Posted on 21 February, 2018  |  3 minutes (513 words)

Tags: general  intro 

The short answer… everywhere. It'd feel weird to just start writing a blog without explaining why. I could just go right into a technical topic, but I think it is important to draw some context into why I want to write. Basically, I want to share my knowledge and maybe some thoughts at times. I have a wide range of interests. I'm not just an Android developer, I'm not just a backend developer. [Read More]
general  intro