DevFest Prague: 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, multi-platform navigation support, multi-platform 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 Prague - Oct 25’ 󰎱 Ash Davies Android GDE - Berlin ashdavies.dev
2. “Don’t do that thing I knowingly did despite me telling you not to” Every one of my talks, ever.
3. Decision-Making Hype Driven Development
4. Design-Decisions Hype Driven Development
5. Design Decisions Common Tools • Language: Java, Scala, Swift, Kotlin • Dependencies: Dagger, DI, Koin, Metro • Threading: RxJava, Java, Coroutines • Serialization: Gson, Moshi, Jackson, KotlinX • Network: Retrofit, OkHttp, Ktor • Image Loading: Glide, Picasso, Coil
6. Decision Paralysis Hype Driven Development
7. Option 1: Do Nothing Design Decisions Advantages: - Low engineering complexity - Staffing needs are minimal - Timeline is manageable Disadvantages: - Doesn’t solve the problem
8. Option 2: Do Something Design Decisions Advantages: - May solve the problem Disadvantages: - Many ?
9. Decision Fatigue Hype Driven Development
10. How I learned to stop worrying and love the failures Hype Driven Development
11. 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)
12. 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
14. Law of the Instrument “Birmingham Screwdriver”
15. 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
16. Decision Making Hype Driven Development • Heavy social media utilisation (Twitter, BlueSky, Fediverse, Reddit, etc) • Human psychology (Argumentum ad novitatem) • Promise to make life easier, better, faster, stronger…
17. 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
18. Risk-Management Hype Driven Development
19. 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)
20. 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
21. Risk Management Hype Driven Development • Annotations, experimental, deprecated, Opt-In • Coding for disposability • Isolated API surface • Coding workshops • Feasibility investigations (timeboxed)
22. Solutions Looking for a Problem Hype Driven Development
23. 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.
24. YAGNI You Aren’t Going to Need It
25. 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
26. Inevitability Hype Driven Development
27. 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
28. 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
29. 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
30. 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
31. Case Study 🧪 github.com/ashdavies/playground.ashdavies.dev # 0c3e36b | AGP- 8.11.0 | Compose - 1.9.0 | Kotlin 2.2.20
32. playground.ashdavies.dev • 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.dev
33. androidstudygroup.github.io/conferences/ ashdavies.dev
34. [{ "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" } }]
35. --- name: "Droidcon" website: https://www.berlin.droidcon.com/ location: Berlin, Germany date_start: 2022-07-06 date_end: 2022-07-08 ---
36. GraphQL docs.github.com/en/graphql
37. query conferences { repository(owner: "AndroidStudyGroup", name: "conferences") { events: object(expression: "HEAD:_conferences") { ... on Tree { entries { data: object { ... on Blob { oid text } # ... }
38. "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" }, /* ... */ },
39. ashdavies/playground Case Study
40. Case Study ashdavies/playground
41. TypeScript ashdavies/playground
42. Multiplatform ashdavies/playground
43. Kotlin for JavaScript kotlinlang.org/docs/js-overview kotlin { js { nodejs() } jvm() }
44. 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()
45. ✓ playground.ashdavies.dev
46. playground.ashdavies.dev
47. playground.ashdavies.dev
48. 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
49. Compose Multiplatform Compose in the Cloud ☁
50. Firebase AppCheck Compose in the Cloud ☁ github.com/ ashdavies/playground/ tree/main/app-check/ app-check-function
51. playground.ashdavies.dev Py
54. Story Time “Terraform”
55. Kotti Cat Study CENSORED
56. Py Cat Study CENSORED
57. Knowledge Sharing Hype Driven Development ashdavies.dev
58. 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.dev
59. 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.dev
60. “Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.” Jean-Paul Sartre
61. Thanks! Ash Davies - Cat Person Android GDE - Berlin ashdavies.dev
62. 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