DevFest Berlin: Hype Driven Development

Ever wondered what it would take to combine all the experimental features of a language you love (Spoilers... It's Kotlin!) into one big bundle?

I'm a lover of new and shiny stuff, so let me share with you my experience of using everything shiny, and new, in my pet project, to show you how to *not* do all the things you might want to do with yours!

JetBrains Compose for Desktop, Unstable Coroutines APIs, version catalogues, Gradle composite builds, multiplatform navigation support, multiplatform paging, GraphQl, Firebase Cloud Functions, Molecule, Mosaic, what could go wrong?!

This isn't a fairytale story, when making use of unstable technology, it's not always tested with other unstable technologies; I'm going to tell you of all the things I could have done better, so that you don't need to make the same mistakes!

Transcript

1. Hype Driven Development How I learned to stop worrying and love the failures DevFest Berlin - Dec 22’ 󰎲 Ash Davies Android / Kotlin GDE - Berlin ashdavies@androiddev.social
2. “Be careful not to do that thing I knowingly did despite my own advice” Every one of my talks, ever. ashdavies@androiddev.social
3. Decision-Making Hype Driven Development ashdavies@androiddev.social
4. Design-Decisions Hype Driven Development ashdavies@androiddev.social
5. Design Decisions Common Tools • Language: Kotlin, Java, Scala, or Swift • Dependencies: Dagger, DI, or Koin • Threading: Coroutines, RxJava, or Java • Serialization: Gson, Moshi, Jackson, or KotlinX • Network: Retrofit, OkHttp, or Ktor • Image Loading: Coil, Glide, or Picasso ashdavies@androiddev.social
6. Decision Paralysis Hype Driven Development ashdavies@androiddev.social
7. Option 1: Do Nothing Design Decisions Advantages: - Low engineering complexity. - Staffing needs are minimal - Timeline is manageable Disadvantages: - Doesn’t solve the problem ashdavies@androiddev.social
8. Decision Fatigue Hype Driven Development
9. How I learned to stop worrying and love the failures Hype Driven Development ashdavies@androiddev.social
10. Decision Making Hype Driven Development • Stakeholder influence, feature driven requirements • Reaction to issues in the codebase (ie. tech debt) • New tech, promises faster, easier solutions • Not limited to engineering (CEO Driven Development) ashdavies@androiddev.social
11. Law of the Instrument “Birmingham Screwdriver” “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” - Abraham Maslow ashdavies@androiddev.social
12. Community Influence Hype Driven Development • Enticement to use a product or service, usually monetised for enterprise • Seemingly benevolent, promises developer interests • Trustworthy whilst goals are aligned ashdavies@androiddev.social
13. Decision Making Hype Driven Development • Heavy social media utilisation (Twitter, Reddit, etc) • Human psychology (Argumentum ad novitatem) • Promise to make life easier, better, faster, stronger… ashdavies@androiddev.social
14. Risks of using immature software Hype Driven Development • Dependent on third party development commitment • Libraries sometimes need years to evolve and mature • Very difficult to revert if results are undesired • More likely to produce poor quality code • Often new learning curve introduced • Investment of unknown future ashdavies@androiddev.social
15. Risk-Management Hype Driven Development ashdavies@androiddev.social
16. Risk Management 🤷 Hype Driven Development @Deprecated( message = "CoroutineScope.rxCompletable is deprecated in favour of top-level rxCompletable", level = DeprecationLevel.ERROR, replaceWith = ReplaceWith("rxCompletable(context, block)") ) public fun CoroutineScope.rxCompletable( context: CoroutineContext = EmptyCoroutineContext, block: suspend CoroutineScope.() -> Unit ): Completable = rxCompletableInternal(this, context, block) ashdavies@androiddev.social
17. Risk Management 🤷 Hype Driven Development @RequiresOptIn(message = "This API is experimental. It may be changed in the future without notice.") @Retention(AnnotationRetention.BINARY) @Target(AnnotationTarget.CLASS, AnnotationTarget.FUNCTION) annotation class MyDateTime // Opt-in requirement annotation @MyDateTime class DateProvider // A class requiring opt-in ashdavies@androiddev.social
18. Risk Management Hype Driven Development • Annotations, experimental, deprecated, Opt-In • Coding for disposability • Isolated API surface • Coding workshops • Feasibility investigations (timeboxed) ashdavies@androiddev.social
19. Solutions Looking for a Problem Hype Driven Development ashdavies@androiddev.social
20. Solutions Looking for a Problem Hype Driven Development • New technology might not be appropriate for your project • Be cautious of finding problems that don’t exist • If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. ashdavies@androiddev.social
21. YAGNI You Aren’t Going to Need It
22. The Benefit of @Experimental Hype Driven Development • Early adoption of inevitable software (sometimes) • Contribute bug reports or resolutions upstream • New features provide potential market growth • Knowledge sharing in the development community ashdavies@androiddev.social
23. Inevitability Hype Driven Development
24. Is It Worth It? • Depends on company and team priorities • Development community benefits everybody • Early adopters guide and provide contributions • Development cost absorption Hype Driven Development ashdavies@androiddev.social
25. How to get away with it anyway… • Not a good idea to follow hype in a production codebase • Still eager to try out new technologies Hype Driven Development ashdavies@androiddev.social
26. Open Source to the rescue! • Many engineers maintain a playground repository • Many examples of new tech in Google repos • Many open source projects needing maintainers • Contribute to a project that can make use of it Hype Driven Development ashdavies@androiddev.social
27. Use cases for a playground project • Majority of mobile applications are a user-friendly facade for API data • There are many open APIs available providing niche data sets Hype Driven Development ashdavies@androiddev.social
28. Case Study 🧪 github.com/ashdavies/playground # 451f3d8 | AGP- 7.3.1 | Compose - 1.2.1 | Kotlin 1.7.20 ashdavies@androiddev.social
29. Case Study ashdavies/playground • Takes conference data from open source ASG contributions • Built heavily around Compose for Desktop • Backed by Cloud Functions and Firebase Firestore • Firebase AppCheck Server Kotlin SDK • Shared models across platforms • Quasi-monorepo for side projects Hype Driven Development ashdavies@androiddev.social
30. androidstudygroup.github.io/conferences/ ashdavies@androiddev.social
31. [{ "name": "droidcon-berlin-2021.md", "path": "_conferences/droidcon-berlin-2021.md", "sha": "9361834b3e310ffd8992c1020eb868ebb56c564a", "size": 239, "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/AndroidStudyGroup/conferences/contents/_conferences/droidcon-berlin-2021.md?ref=gh-pages", "html_url": "https://github.com/AndroidStudyGroup/conferences/blob/gh-pages/_conferences/droidcon-berlin-2021.md", "git_url": "https://api.github.com/repos/AndroidStudyGroup/conferences/git/blobs/9361834b3e310ffd8992c1020eb868ebb56c564a", "download_url": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AndroidStudyGroup/conferences/gh-pages/_conferences/droidcon-berlin-2021.md", "type": "file", "_links": { "self": "https://api.github.com/repos/AndroidStudyGroup/conferences/contents/_conferences/droidcon-berlin-2021.md?ref=gh-pages", "git": "https://api.github.com/repos/AndroidStudyGroup/conferences/git/blobs/9361834b3e310ffd8992c1020eb868ebb56c564a", "html": "https://github.com/AndroidStudyGroup/conferences/blob/gh-pages/_conferences/droidcon-berlin-2021.md" } }]
32. --- name: "Droidcon" website: https://www.berlin.droidcon.com/ location: Berlin, Germany date_start: 2022-07-06 date_end: 2022-07-08 ---
33. GraphQL docs.github.com/en/graphql
34. query conferences { repository(owner: "AndroidStudyGroup", name: "conferences") { events: object(expression: "HEAD:_conferences") { ... on Tree { entries { data: object { ... on Blob { oid text } # ... }
35. "data": { "repository": { "events": { "entries": [ { "data": { "oid": "9a2a79fe414cf02fd0904c02ef7ce416344d747d", "text": "---\nname: \"360|AnDev\"\nwebsite: http://360andev.com/\nlocation: Denver, Colorado, USA\n\n date_start: 2016-07-28\ndate_end: 2016-07-29\n\ncfp:\nstart: 2016-01-27\nend: 2016-04-29\nsite: http://360andev.com /call-for-papers/\n---\n" }, /* ... */ },
36. ashdavies/playground Case Study
37. Case Study ashdavies/playground
38. TypeScript ashdavies/playground
39. Multiplatform ashdavies/playground
40. Kotlin for JavaScript kotlinlang.org/docs/js-overview kotlin { js { nodejs() } jvm() }
41. Kotlin for JavaScript kotlinlang.org/docs/js-overview val dyn: dynamic = ... // 'whatever' is not defined anywhere dyn.whatever(1, "foo", dyn) dyn.whatever(*arrayOf(1, 2, 3)) dyn.foo().bar.baz()
42. ✓ Case Study ashdavies/playground
43. Case Study ashdavies/playground
44. Case Study ashdavies/playground
45. Kotlin all the things! An experiment in creating a mobile app and firebase cloud functions in Kotlin – Andrew Reitz andrewreitz.com/tech_blog/kotlin-multiplatform-android-firebase
46. Compose Multiplatform Compose in the Cloud ☁
47. Firebase AppCheck Compose in the Cloud ☁ github.com/ ashdavies/playground/ tree/main/app-check/ app-check-function
48. Case Study ashdavies/playground Py
49. Kotti Cat Study ashdavies/playground
50. CENSORED Py Cat Study ashdavies/playground
51. Knowledge Sharing Hype Driven Development ashdavies@androiddev.social
52. Work and Life Balance • Not everybody can, wants, or should spend time outside of work on pet projects • Some are fortunate to have time for research, and community involvement • Advocate for time to evaluate feasible technology, timeboxed, hack-week, etc • Propose solutions for internal tooling, don’t forget the business case 🤑! • Develop for disposability when in production (see “Everything is an API”) Hype Driven Development ashdavies@androiddev.social
53. Conclusion • HDD is high risk for production environments • Satisfy dev thirst in a safe environment • Use learnings to advise feasibility • Share learnings with the community Hype Driven Development ashdavies@androiddev.social
54. “Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.” Jean-Paul Sartre
55. Thanks! Ash Davies - Cat Person Android / Kotlin GDE - Berlin ashdavies@androiddev.social
56. Attributions • “Feature” [monkeyuser.com] • Hype Driven Development [blog.daftcode.pl/hype-driven-development-3469fc2e9b22] • Instant Gratification Monkey [waitbutwhy.com] • Kotlin All the Things [andrewreitz.com/tech_blog/kotlin-multiplatform-android-firebase] • Untitled [goose.game] Hype Driven Development