I gave a workshop today at Barcamp Philly that heavily drew from Julie Pagano’s workshop and slides. I reorganized the time frame (her workshop is a whole day and walks you through many more steps of conference presenting) and made it fit in a 45 minute time frame.
Category Archives: Mobile
5 Steps for Evaluating a Library
Have a short deadline? Boss breathing down your neck?
Don’t start prowling github just yet! Work through the following steps first.
1. Determine what you need.
Sounds simple, but so often we skip this basic step.
What’s Your Tech Origin Story?
When Women Stopped Coding is a (mostly) non-depressing look at what was happening in the 80’s and 90’s to contribute to the plummeting number of women in computer science. In particular, I hadn’t thought deeply about the emergence of computing have and have nots.
My parents didn’t buy a computer for the home. Luckily I had access to computers at my friend’s homes and was on the Internet pretty darn early via Tallahassee Freenet & BBSes in 1995. I went to nicer middle and high schools that had technology classes (though not programming, just typing). I often frequented the library to get online. I loved finally having 24-hour access to the computer lab in my dorm during my first year of college (1998).
Changing Course? 3 Questions to Ask Yourself First.
Frustrated by fragments? Intrigued by dependency injection? It may be tempting to switch approaches to solve your current pain.
Don’t throw away that code just yet! Think through the following questions first.
1. What problem am I solving?
Continue reading Changing Course? 3 Questions to Ask Yourself First.
I won’t be ditching fragments anytime soon …
Square has come out against fragments, and if this r/AndroidDev thread is any indication, plenty of developers are ready to jump ship. Let’s take a step back from the hype and think through their proposed solution.
Continue reading I won’t be ditching fragments anytime soon …
Droidcon Stockholm
tl;dr Here’s the slides! The Fragment Transition
Photo Credit: Xavi Rigau Continue reading Droidcon Stockholm
5 Principles of Android Logging
A recent question got me thinking about how I use logging in my development/debug process.
Don’t tell lies.
Remember that it’s easy to lie to yourself with logs. I can’t tell you how many times I have made incorrect assumptions about what is going wrong with my code based on the truth presented by the logs. Eventually after exhausting all the other options you finally start tracking down the real problem.
Managing Static and Dynamic Fragments
When reading the reviews on one of the Android books I recommend, I came across this question:
I read the chapter on UI and the section on fragments. I followed the given example step by step and got it to work. So far so good. I then attempted to build my own solution of dynamically adding fragments to a layout. I’m none the wiser as to how to reference the views within each dynamically added fragment. The 3 things I really want to know about any control: (1) how to add statically, (2) how to add dynamically, (3) how to reference any view I place into the UI.
Fragments can be a tricky subject! I’ll break down the difference between static and dynamic fragments in this post to give you a better idea of how they work.
Continue reading Managing Static and Dynamic Fragments
Improving Apps for Emerging Markets
tl;dr My favorite talk from the inaugural DroidCon in the United States was “Improving Facebook and Instagram in Emerging Markets.” A storify of my notes & tweets follow.
June Trip Report: Kids on Computers and Beyond
I spent very rewarding 2 weeks in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico with Kids on Computers to install and maintain computer labs.
I touristed around Oaxaca City for two days: Day 1 and Day 2.
We moved the computers that were bought in country to Huajuapan de León, our home base for the labs.
Continue reading June Trip Report: Kids on Computers and Beyond