Most Android developers nowadays are faced with challenges of delivering optimum feature/product in due time. Most developers believe working hard will ensure their success in getting this actionable result, howbeit, working smart is the ground to get this done.
working smart brings productivity while working too hard might resolve to frustration.
In this article, we will be looking at some basic tips to working smart as an android developer in order to:
- Fasten up your next development
- Increase the quality of your next mobile app
- Get familiarised with open source
- Know the leadership and forces in Android community
Android development tips to working smart
- Break down the processes via computational thinking
- Choose a design pattern (MVC, MVP, MVVM)
- Use Open Source libraries
- Share your problems and solutions
- Stay Updated
- Engage your Belief in solving problems
Computational thinking
This is a process of thinking through the app development processes while bearing in mind the following points
- Decomposition: breaking down of data, processes, and problems into smaller manageable parts
- Pattern Recognition: observing patterns, trends, and regularities in data
- Abstraction: Identifying the general principles that generate these patterns
- Algorithm: developing the step by step instructions for solving the problem.
For more in depth knowledge, you can read up via http://computationalthinkingcourse.withgoogle.com
Design Patterns/Architecture
This will eventually save your time during the course of development by sticking to a certain pattern while writing your code. You can easily choose between Model-View-Controller (MVC), Model-View-Presenter (MVP), or Model-View-ViewModel. If you aren’t familiar with this, take a few minute to study this architecture from google samples on Github via https://github.com/googlesamples/android-architecture
Use open source Libraries (GitHub)
- Network library such as:
- Okhttp
- Volley
- Retrofit
- Image Library such as
- Picasso
- Glide
- Dependency injection such as
- ButterKnife
- Android Annotations
- Dagger (2)
- Video streaming
- Libstreaming
- UI libraries such as
- 1. PageIndicator (github.com/romandanylyk/PageIndicatorView)
2. FanLayoutManager (github.com/Cleveroad/FanLayoutManager )
3. DiagonalLayout ( github.com/florent37/DiagonalLayout )
4. Ticker (github.com/robinhood/ticker )
5. AndroidImageCropper (github.com/ArthurHub/Android-Image-Cropper)
- Data pub/sub library and Reactive Programming
- RxJava & RxAndroid
- EventBus
Share your problems and solutions
Sharing problems is one of the instant ways of forging ahead while coding. A problem shared is a problem solved and always remember that no one is as smart as all of us.
- Use a platform such as stackoverflow.com to share your problems, and don’t always forget to also share back how the problem was solved, provided there was a slight change/new approach on how you get it solved.
- Join an online Community for collaboration, learning, and sharing, this will keep you apprised in getting access to the latest, efficient, and best way of doing things from like minds. Ever wondering which of the online community to join, below are some of the online community you can join
- Android chat via androidchat.co
- Dev Community via devcenter-square-slack.herokuapp.com
- stackoverflow.com
- androidcommunity.com
- quora.com
Stay Updated
Follow experts
- Follow up on the experts in the Android community. You can get a comprehensive curated list of android developer experts to follow via https://techbeacon.com/40-leading-android-developers-follow-twitter. And of course, you can follow Adetuyi Tolu Emmanuel on Twitter @adetuyitolu.
- Read tech news and Android blog posts
- Attend events and meetups
You can always search for your interesting meetups using
Your Belief
This is the strongest of all highlighted points, this reflects solemnly on the why? Part of your day to day activities, the reason why you chose to be an android developer, the reason why you wanted to solve the problem via coding, the strong beliefs you have in yourself. This will always go a long way to bring life to any project/feature at hand.
This post was originally published here by me
