The purpose of this article is to explain a few fundamental concepts and terms regarding the Jetpack Compose UI Library on Android. I intend to use the least amount of jargon necessary, and to connect new concepts with those which may be familiar to you when appropriate.

While this is a beginners guide to Compose, it will not be a beginners guide to Android, so readers will be expected to have built at least an application or two (though not in compose necessarily).

Before we begin, I was initially planning to write a follow up article directed towards more senior…

The title of this article is full of a bunch of words, some of which may be unclear to programmers who only write low-level code, and some of which may be unclear to programmers who only write web and mobile GUI applications.

I will try to hopefully bridge the gap for people from either background, but understand that this is not an article meant for a quick skim with divided attention. I have arranged these concepts in a logical progression, so please buckle up and set aside a few minutes of your day to possibly change the way you think…

Concurrency is widely regarded as one of the most difficult challenges among all fields of computation. I was first introduced to concurrent programming in high level languages, and the magic did not disappear until I studied it in C/C++.

If you are still wondering how it works under the hood then I suggest that as a learning goal, but we will not be going that low level today. Instead we will look at a practical way to write concurrent code which gives us more control than AsyncTask, but requires orders of magnitude less configuration (barely any at all) than a…

The technical content in this article is intended for software developers who have written at least one significant application. It does not need to be in the realm of GUI programming, but that is my own expertise and this article will reflect that.

In this article, we will:

• Briefly summarize the difference between principles and rules
• Discuss the principle of when it is actually better to not follow a principle (ironic, no?)
• Refine this principle for programmers using some specific examples

Principles And Rules

Before we proceed, let me briefly define these two words for the purposes of this article:

• A principle is…

A question which has been popping up repeatedly in my Q&A sessions since the Navigation Library from Android Architecture Components was released, is whether or not a Single Activity Architecture is:

• Detrimental (bad)
• Not Important (neutral)
• Useful (good)
• Mandatory (apply everywhere and in all situations)

In this short article, I will attempt to reduce the net sum of confusion which I see from junior and intermediate developers on whether or not this practice is necessary; along with how you might make this value judgement for yourself.

Do Not Just Parrot Authority Figures

Any senior developer ought to know that these sorts of things (frameworks) usually sit…

I am asked very frequently about which OS, language, platform, framework, library, IDE, and or whatever other kind of tech, is the best choice for new developers. Some more frequent questions lately have taken the form of:

• Should I write native, web, or hybrid applications?
• Should I pick Dart, Kotlin, or Javascript?
• Should I write my own solution for concurrency or should I use a framework to handle that?

Ultimately, we are asking the same question regardless of what we are talking about: What is the best choice to make?

An expert in their field, or someone who simply pretends…

Most people either do not start, or quit learning to code for two reasons:

• Learning one’s first programming language can be a very difficult task
• It is important to have a good teacher (or at least good instructions) but they can be hard to find

In this article, I will:

• Talk about dealing with these problems in practical terms
• Attempt to disentangle you from some of the thoughts you may be having about your capability of learning to write code
• Give you some road signs to watch out for if you decide to stay on this road

The First Programming Language

Some people are…

For roughly the first 24 years of my life (I am turning 27 in less than a month as of writing this), I did not know how to find a balance between taking a break versus wasting time. One of these things is a critical component of working hard, being productive, and still living a happy and blameless life (though nobody is perfect). The other at best presents a temporary distraction and at worst, sadness and depression.

First I will discuss my experience at both extremes and then we will go into finding the path towards balance. The principles I…