Some thoughts about 2024 Android development trends
Already a month has passed since 2024 started, and I struggled a little bit with my overloaded schedule to write this post as close as possible to the beginning of this new year. I think it’s worthwhile to stop for a moment and try to think about what lies ahead of us in the following year. I like to do this exercise each year, mainly for myself, to take a break and try to develop my understanding of the trends in the tech world and also of software development as a business. This is the first year I am doing it publicly.
Below, I will share my vision about some topics that will impact my life as an Android developer, and probably relate to you too if you use the same tech stack.
AI
Probably the greatest buzzword, with some even saying that AI will replace software developers. For sure, this will not happen in 2024, but I think we will see some changes in the way we work. The changes I am thinking about involve the adoption of tools based on AI and machine learning, such as code generation, writing tests, intelligent recommendations, at least some levels ahead of current code completion we have in our IDEs. Of course, these tools already exist, but from what I see in the market, they haven’t been adopted on a large scale by clients, at least on an enterprise level. Probably there are still some worries that need to be addressed to see AI-generated code in an enterprise code base.
I feel that this might change in 2024, and we will start to see some “cool” companies driving change by encouraging their software developers to use AI in their daily work and promoting this engineering culture of AI-assisted productivity.
Until then, we can try these tools on our own and be prepared to surf the new wave when the opportunity arises.
Android Tech Stack
To be honest, I do not foresee any big changes versus last year. Kotlin will continue to be the must-have language for Android development, at least for new developments. Java code will still exist in apps released some years ago, and it may or may not be replaced. If there are no business requirements to modify to a greater extent the already written Java components, my guess is that refactoring to Kotlin will have a low priority.
Compose is already a requirement in many jobs and will probably keep growing its market share in 2024. I’ve seen a lot of jobs for which Compose is a hard requirement, so if you didn’t have a chance to work with it in your current project, it’s better to get a grasp of it in a personal project.
For async work, the developer community will keep its preference for coroutines together with Flows. The job market will also require RxJava for older Java code.
In terms of architecture, from what I see and hear from fellow devs, Clean architecture rules and patterns dominate the market, together with architecture design patterns like MVVM or MVI. I do not expect this to change. I have a feeling that MVI is gaining more traction, but this may be influenced by the projects I encountered and it shouldn’t be representative of the market as a whole.
App Features
In terms of features that will be requested by clients, my bet is on AI-powered “something”: image recognition, text recognition, user recommendations, etc. Most probably the work will be done server-side, and in the Android codebase, we will just consume an API result. But you can always give it a try with Android ML Kit and see what you can do with it.
After AI-powered features, I see a great emphasis on security & privacy concerns, so it’s worth refreshing our security knowledge, and a good place to start is Google security guidelines. A good chapter to master it is biometric authentication, if you haven’t yet the opportunity to implement it in your projects.
Last but not least, as data analysis is mainstream for some years now, I think that engineers who can leverage analytics tools to gather product knowledge will have a boost in their careers.
Android Job Market
The job market is currently a little bit tough, and probably it will stay like that at least for the first part of 2024. With the end of the 0% interest rate period, startups are having a difficult time getting financed if they don’t provide good numbers and enough reasons for expected success. Fewer money in the market means fewer apps being developed. Of course, there will still be the big players whose apps will continue to be enriched with new features, but the demand for developers is reduced. This affects junior to middle developers disproportionately, as currently, there are very few positions opened for less senior folks. If you are in this position, all I can say is that I feel you, stay optimistic and for sure better times will come. Keep polishing your skills and build your portfolios to be prepared for when opportunity arises.
After the hyper-growth during pandemics turned out to be not sustainable, it seems like a bubble has burst, and a job in software development is not bringing anymore a lot of safety like it used to be. For the moment, there are more developers out there than jobs.
I think this is all I had in mind for now. I will revisit those predictions at the end of the year and will see what I got wrong and will adjust my magic crystal ball.
