Android Backstage, a podcast by and for Android developers. Hosted by developers from the Android engineering team, this show covers topics of interest to Android programmers, with in-depth discussions and interviews with engineers on the Android team at Google. Subscribe to Android Developers YouTube → https://goo.gle/AndroidDevs
Episode 160: ART History
In this episode, Romain, Chet and Tor sit down with Brian Carlstrom and Nicolas Geoffray to discuss their work on ART (the Android Runtime). Brian and Nicolas describe the early prototypes and bringup of ART, getting it production ready, as well as recent developments such as cloud profiles. Chet, Brian and Romain on the top row, and Tor and Nicolas below Brian: https://carlstrom.com Chet: @chethaase Romain: @romainguy Tor: @tornorbye
Episode 159: Interview with Chris Lacy
Chet and Romain host Chris Lacy, a long time independent Android developer. In this episode, Chris explains how he decides what apps to build, how he used various platform APIs to create innovative applications like LinkBubble, and what challenges he faces. Chet, Chris and Romain Chris's apps include: SwirlWalls, a live wallpaper ActionLauncher, a replacement launcher By the way, Chris is looking to hire an Android developer. If interested, you can reach him at youshouldhireme@actionlauncher.com. Chris: @chrismlacy Chet: @chethaase Romain: @romainguy Tor: @tornorbye
Episode 158: Jetpack Compose... C'est bêta !
Chet, Nick, Clara, Leland, Tor, Adam, and Romain. So many guests! This time, Tor, Romain, and Chet chatted with a few people on the Jetpack Compose team, about... Jetpack Compose! Compose hit Beta a couple of weeks ago (don't believe me? Check out the recent Android show on Compose Show!), so we took the opportunity to talk to some of the people that have helped build it. We talk about the current state of the library, but also about some of the design decisions that went into developing the APIs and functionality. (Note on the audio quality for this episode - it turns out that mixing so many people, all of whom recorded themselves separately using very different hardware and setups was... tricky. It's listenable, but maybe a tad below the level we shoot for. Blame the pandemic. I do.) Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly. #TheAndroidShow: Jetpack Compose The Jetpack Compose site (overview, tutorial, docs, samples, and more) Chet: @chethaase Romain: @romainguy Tor: @tornorbye Nick: @crafty Clara: @clarabayarri Leland: @intelligibabble Adam: @adamwp Thanks to our audio engineer, Dustin Elm, who has handled all of our audio mixing for the last couple of years, including the tricky part of mixing all of our remote- recorded episodes, like this one. Dustin's moving on to (greener? softer? louder?) pastures, so we'll be using a new, exciting process for mixing future episodes. Thanks, Dustin!
Episode 157: Audio feedback
What does a podcast look like? We don't know, so here's a picture of the podcast's website We want to hear from you! In this episode, Tor, Romain, and Chet talk about what they could do — or not do —to improve Android Developers Backstage. Please check our survey and let us know how you would like to see this podcast evolve. We recommend you first listen to the podcast to get the full context for some of the questions in the survey. Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly. Chet: @chethaase Romain: @romainguy Tor: @tornorbye Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
Episode 156: Android Runtime Classic (Dalvik)
It's history time! Or even [pre-]ART History time! We didn't take a picture this time. Please imagine what we looked like. This time, Tor, Romain, and Chet were joined by Dan Bornstein, one of the early members of the Android team. Dan joined in 2005 to create a runtime for Android, which became Dalvik. We talked about some of the early placeholder VMs used while Dalvik was coming online, some of the design decisions for Dalvik (like its register-based vs. stack-based implementation), and nice techy details about runtimes, garbage collectors, and optimizations. Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly. Chet: @chethaase Romain: @romainguy Tor: @tornorbye Dan: @danfuzz Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
Episode 155: WindowManagerManagers
Top row: Chet, Romain, Rob. Bottom row: Wale, Tor. In this episode, we chat with Wale Ogunwale and Rob Carr from the Android Framework team about the Window Manager. Tune in to learn about the evolution of the window manager, the distinction between System UI and the window manager, implementation challenges and recent architectural changes. Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly. Chet: @chethaase Romain: @romainguy Tor: @tornorbye Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
Episode 154: It's a Wrap!
This episode is dedicated to the memory of our dear friend and colleague, Carl Quinn. Our last episode of the year arrives just in time for the holiday season. In this episode, Tor, Chet, and Romain go over everything that happened in 2020, both good and bad. We look back at how conferences have been impacted by the pandemic, why Android Studio changed its versioning scheme, the new tools and libraries that were released, etc. We would like to thank all of our listeners for their continued support. We'll be back in early 2021 with more episodes and new guests! Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly. Chet: @chethaase Romain: @romainguy Tor: @tornorbye Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
Episode 153: Ok, Ok, Ok
Romain, Tor, and Chet talked with Jesse Wilson from Square. Jesse has worked on several popular open-source libraries, including OkHttp, Okio, and [Ok]Moshi. We talk about those libraries, and others, and about Android, library, framework and Kotlin development. And about that nasty habit some engineers have of turning a feature request or minor annoyance into a project of creating a new open-source library instead. Favorite quote, from Jesse: "I started with 2k. Someone told me 8k was faster." Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly. Links: OkHttp OkHttp Kotlin Release Okio Okio Buffer.kt internals GraalVM Jesse: @jessewilson Chet: @chethaase Romain: @romainguy Tor: @tornorbye Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
Episode 152: Image Loading with Coil
Chet, Colin, Romain, and Tor This week, Tor, Romain and Chet are joined by a special guest: Colin White from Instacart. Colin is the author of Coil, a popular image loading library backed by Kotlin and Kotlin Coroutines. In this episode, Colin explains what Coil is, how and why it was created, etc. Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly. Links: Coil Coil on GitHub The feature request Romain filed And the PR to implement that feature request Colin: @colinwhi Chet: @chethaase Romain: @romainguy Tor: @tornorbye Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
Episode 151: Paging3
Chet, Dustin, Chris, and Romain. (Tor not pictured. Because he wasn't there) Romain and Chet talked with Dustin Lam and Chris Craik from the Toolkit team about Paging3. Paging3 (currently in alpha) is a complete rewrite of (wait for it...) Paging2, using Kotlin, coroutines, and Flow for optimal implementation and APIs. (But note that there are also APIs for developers using the Java programming language and/or RxJava, so take your pick). We talk about Paging, the asynchronous work that made coroutines an obvious choice for the implementation, recent and future features, and API design in general. Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly. Links: AndroidX Paging library Bug bounty hotlist! Dustin: @itsdustinlam Chris: @chris_craik Chet: @chethaase Romain: @romainguy Tor: @tornorbye Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
Episode 150: Aaptly Named
Top row: Tor and Romain Bottom row: Ryan and Chet In this episode, Chet, Romain and Tor talk with Ryan Mitchell from the Android Framework Team. We cover the Android resources in general and the aapt2 tool in particular. Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly. Chet: @chethaase Romain: @romainguy Tor: @tornorbye Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
Episode 149: ADB over WiFi on ADB
Top row: Chet, Joshua and Romain. Bottom row: Renaud and Tor In this episode, Chet, Romain and Tor talk with Renaud Paquay and Joshua Duong from the Android Studio and Android Emulator teams. We cover the new ADB over WiFi feature in Android 11, and the Android Studio support for pairing and connecting. Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly. Links https://developer.android.com/studio/command-line/adb#connect-to-a-device-over-wi-fi-android-11+ Renaud: /u/adt_renaud Joshua: /u/joshuaduong Chet: @chethaase Romain: @romainguy Tor: @tornorbye Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
ADB 148: [Constraint|Motion][Layout|Editor]
Sean McQuillan and I talked with Nicolas Roard and John Hoford about MotionEditor, which went stable recently in Android Studio 4.0. But as long as we were talking about that tool, we also talked extensively about MotionLayout in general as well as ConstraintLayout, new features like Flow, the difficulties of animating text properties, and more. Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly. Links MotionTags screencast series MotionEditor guide MotionEditor release article ConstraintLayout guide ConstraintLayout 2.0 article John: @johnhoford Nicolas: @camaelon Chet: @chethaase Tor: @tornorbye Romain: @romainguy Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
Episode 147: Jetpack Compose Alpha
The real star of the show: Jetpack Compose This week, after a long series of developer previews, we are celebrating the release of Jetpack Compose alpha. In this episode, Clara Bayarri, Matvei Malkov, and Anna-Chiara Bellini are joining Chet and Romain to talk about this milestone. You will learn more about what does the alpha mean to the team, where did Compose come from, how the team approaches API design, some of the challenges behind building a new UI toolkit, and much more. Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly. Links Jetpack Compose Tutorials and codelabs Android Studio Setup Samples on GitHub Thinking in Compose (video) Chet: @chethaase Tor: @tornorbye Romain: @romainguy Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.
Episode 146: The Game Changer
Dan (played by an icon), Greg, and a tiny Romain in the upper right This time, Romain was hosting all on his own for this conversation about game technology with Greg Hartrell, product manager for games on Play/Android, and Dan Galpin, developer advocate for games on Android. They talked about recent developments and offerings for game developers, including the Android development plugin for Visual Studio, other specialized tools for game developers, and new offerings from the team like Android Asset Delivery and Android App Bundle for distribution. Subscribe to the podcast feed or download the audio file directly. Links Build Games for Android Android Game Dev Show Greg: @ghartrell Dan: @dagalpin Chet: @chethaase Tor: @tornorbye Romain: @romainguy Thanks to continued tolerance and support by our audio engineer, Dustin Elm.