Paris Android Makers 2019 — It was the great conference!
It was my second visit to Paris Android Makers. So I can compare and say that this time it was even better 👍 than previous year.
Each year organizers provide an excellent service and experiment with innovations. This time we had an AR quest to search for Easter Eggs with possibility to get a cake if all are found and even a Chocolate Android for a winner :)
Venue
Beffroi de Montrouge is located almost in Paris and can be easily navigated by Metro 4. Building itself is the great fit for such type of events with 2 big auditoriums and several smaller ones. Organizers are very strict about number of participants, so it was not overcrowded (tickets have ended a month before event).
Office Hours and App Inspection were another initiatives, which gave participants a possibility to benefit even more from this conference. But sessions were so good, that I didn’t succeed to try those new initiatives. Let me tell you about sessions instead.
Pragmatic Crafting
Opening talk “Pragmatic Crafting” by
(Google) summed up the crafting of great products by great teams. To make brilliant products you need brilliant teams and vice versa. It’s the vicious cycle, really.So building the right workflow and team life is crucial. Here are main theses:
- modularization helps not only make codebase less coupled and more stable, but also reduces number of interpersonal conflicts
- architecture vision gives each team member right understanding of where we go, so again — less conflicts
- doing and reviewing PRs aren’t easy, but it’s probably the best way to align the team on everything. Pro Tip: specify, which kind of feedback is wanted — architectural, functional, language syntax and so on
- early timely specific feedback is the King
Unidirectional Data Flow is rocking
Everybody talks about right architecture for all the time software exists. On Android we have all these MVPs, MVIs, MVVMs, Clean Architectures and so on. Though each case is unique, it’s always interesting to listen to stories of others.
At this edition of Android Makers I’ve visited 2 such presentations:
- Architectural Journey by (Badoo)
- The Rise Of The State Machines by (Delphia)
To me MVI (Model View Intent) pattern seemed really interesting, so I’m planning to try it in a nearest future in one of my pet projects.
Both authors released their open-source libraries, so we can benefit from them. I like this kind of attitude to work and community around it — together we are the power 💪
Kotlin & Co
, (both from Google) gave a really cool talk “Kotlin Under the Covers” about inner workings of Kotlin. Shortly, it’s not always a good idea to use the syntax sugar just to use syntax sugar.Kotlin Investigator Starter Kit includes 3 mains tools:
- Android Studio’s profiler, which enables you to see Memory (not only) consumption and quickly investigate the Heap across the timeline
- bytecode viewer allows you to easily dig into low-level stuff, which is really simple if you know what you should be looking for
- and finally decompiler convert all that low-level stuff back to Java, so you can see the real code you are writing :)
Another Kotlin-related talk “Building a library for Android and iOS using Kotlin Multiplatform” by
(Mixtiles) was presenting on a real example the potential of Multiplatform Development with Kotlin.Shortly, it’s powerful, but really early-stage and not too stable. So maybe it’s not a good fit for production apps, but can be good enough for late-evening hacks.
Concurrency is becoming really simple and pleasant thanks to Coroutines and Channels, which were introduced lately. To this topic there was a comprehensive coffee-powered talk “Concurrency doesn’t have to be hard: Kotlin Coroutines and Channels” by
from Instagram.Rise of Design Systems
Synchronization between designers and developers has been always a hard topic to discuss. All we know about designers’ imagination, native OSs constraints and pixel-perfect design.
This pain point has been partially solved by such great tools as Sketch, Zeplin, InDesign etc. But the most important thing is to agree on basics — colors, fonts and components.
In a talk “Consistency is Key — Working with a Design System”,
(Deliveroo) classified design building blocks into 5 groups:- atoms are elements, which are not self-sufficient (colors, fonts etc.)
- molecules combine atoms and usually represented by buttons, simple views, etc.
- organisms consist of molecules and can represent parts of the screen (cards, badges, components, etc.)
- templates are screens, but with a mock data
- pages are screens, but filled with a real data
Having such a Design System agreed on start, implemented and being evolved consistently across all platforms will enable the team (PMs, designers, developers, etc.) to have a common language and collaborate effectively.
Animations bring a meaning to Mobile Apps
Later this day
, from Snapp Mobile were talking about the same issue of effective collaboration between designers and developers, but in terms of animations. The talk had a name “Meaningful motion design and how to implement it”.Shortly there are many types of animations, which are seen completely different by those who designs them and by those who implements. Guys were talking about 4 types of animations and tools, which are most appropriate to work with them:
- flows / basic transitions are usually designed in Sketch, handed over to developer in Zeplin / InVision and then implemented in code
- complex transitions / interactions can be created in Adobe XD / InVision Studio / Principle, sent to developer just as Video and implemented by native tools in code
- state animations / micro-interactions are exactly what do apps pretty, can be magically built with Shape Shifter (amazing tool) and delivered to developer as an XML file and just imported to AS
- complex animations done in After Effects can be exported to special format and by use of Lottie played in Android / iOS apps
Smartly designed and implemented animations will help your users to easily catch what’s going on in your apps and get most value from it.
Another great talks about animations:
- “Motional Intelligence: Build smarter animations” done by (Google) explained how and why architecture animations properly to make it work even under extreme conditions.
- “In a World of Pure Android Animation” by (Over) summed up ways of creating cool animations on Android — from Custom Views to Lottie.
Resources are heavier then you think
Yes, all we use resources, but not all of us do it properly. Actually, most of this is little bit confusing.
(Blinklist) took that challenge and created a comprehensive guide to “Styles, Themes, Material Theming”, which will help developers to finally tame styles.xml.Another talk “A resourceful talk about Android Resources” by
(Google) tackled resources problem in general, giving visitors one more chance to get things right. Many small useful tips and insights.Vectors are powerful, but again (as it always happens with Android) it’s not that easy. Vector Drawables are not SVGs, though they are quite similar.
(Lyft) and (Google) in their talk “Vector Workflows” explained in details how Vector Drawables work and how properly use them.Vector Drawables are really simple — canvas of given size and path, which consists of drawing operation of just 5 types. You can even draw them by hand in a notebook. Also you can easily create animations in Vector Drawable format using tools like Shape Shifter (created by author of this talk — Alex Lockwood).
Summary
Visiting such conferences can become a great source of ideas for team, code and life improvements on everyday basis. It’s the place where brightest speakers from top-notch companies across all the world share their experience, wins and failures.
Personally, I’m happy that I had a chance to visit Paris Android Makers and thankful to organizers,
, PAUG and other companies that sponsored and supported this conference.Special thanks to 360Learning (Learning Engagement Platform, which is Connecting Leaders to Learners) for encouraging us to build and grow our skills. It’s probably the best place to work :)
By the way, we are hiring — all open positions here
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