Dan Lew - Dan Lew Codes (Page 2)

Optimizing Play Store Review Times

Earlier this year, Trello noticed that Play Store uploads were being increasingly delayed before being sent to users. Whereas before we could depend on users getting new APKs in a few hours, now it was sometimes taking days. After some investigation, we discovered an interesting property of the Play Store:

politics

How to Vote By Mail in Minnesota (And Make Sure It Counts)

If you want to vote in Minnesota while avoiding COVID-19, then you should vote by mail.

The LOGAF Scale

Have you ever gotten into a heated debate on a pull request, only to find out that the person critiquing your code didn’t really care that much whether their feedback made it into the PR? Or have you been upset when your strenuous objections to some design are going

android

Install Referrer Library Permissions Snafu

Update 3/13/2020: Install Referrer 1.1.2 was released recently which fixes the problem below; go get it! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's been a long time coming: the install_referrer broadcast intent is being shut down on March 1, 2020 [https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2019/11/still-using-installbroadcast-switch-to.html]

kotlin

Coroutines and Java Synchronization Don't Mix

Suppose you've got a critical section [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_section] of code, meaning only one process should execute it at a time. In the Java world, one solution is to slap synchronized on the method and call it a day. In Kotlin, we use @Synchronized

android

When WorkManager Stops Working

When using WorkManager [https://developer.android.com/topic/libraries/architecture/workmanager], be wary about the implications of using unique work [https://developer.android.com/topic/libraries/architecture/workmanager/how-to/unique-work] with the APPEND [https://developer.android.com/reference/androidx/work/ExistingWorkPolicy.html#APPEND] policy. Unique work with APPEND is implemented

annual review

Year in Review (2019)

Another year, another annual review [https://blog.danlew.net/tag/annual-review/] of my public contributions to the world. My output is down this year due to 1. raising a toddler and 2. devoting a lot of my free time to working on climate change causes. Articles * When to use Kotlin&

android

Android Pseudolocalization Update

It's been many years since I last wrote about Android pseudolocalization [https://blog.danlew.net/2015/04/06/pseudolocalization-visiting-androids-bizarro-world/]. There's even some official documentation [https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/pseudolocales] now! I'm back because of two small speedbumps I've since

android

Fixing Android Studio Keyboard Shortcuts

I absolutely adore keyboard shortcuts because they save me both time and money. However, there are two cases where they've failed me recently on Android Studio (on macOS). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- First is the "Find Actions" keyboard shortcut: ⇧⌘A. It's great for finding anything in Android

conferences

Why I’m No Longer Traveling for Conferences

I am a tech conference junkie. I owe much of my career to them: The amount of knowledge I’ve learned is immense, I greatly enjoy being surrounded by tech people, and I get a real high from public speaking (which, besides being good for your Personal Brand™, is an

kotlin

Never break the chain: use Kotlin's extension functions

Years ago I wrote about properly reusing operators in RxJava [https://blog.danlew.net/2015/03/02/dont-break-the-chain/]. In summary, the wrong way to reuse operators is to wrap the Observable (which is bad because it breaks the fluency of the code), whereas the right way is to use compose(

android

Preventing Unwanted Content from Google Keyboard

Android 7.1 added the ability for IMEs to send images (and more) [https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/text/image-keyboard] to EditTexts. Supporting rich content requires you to explicitly opt-in by overriding EditText.onCreateInputConnection(). It's a bit of a hassle [https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/text/

Adding `git log -S` to your code detective toolbox

Programming often involves detective work. Properly fixing a problem often requires understanding how the problem came to be in the first place. One of the best tools for code detectives is git blame. With it, you can trace the lineage of every line of code in your codebase. Armed with

kotlin

When to use Kotlin's standard functions

Kotlin comes with several high-level, generic standard functions that apply to any object: let(), run(), with(), apply(), and also(). If you're new to Kotlin you may be wondering when to use them. They're fairly inscrutable; the source [https://github.com/JetBrains/kotlin/blob/master/libraries/stdlib/

annual review

Year in Review (2018)

It's time for my annual review. This record is more for me than it is for you, but hey, if you want a one-stop shop for Dan's activities in 2018, this is it! My baby was born in March, which somewhat reduced my level of output.

android

The Reality of Migrating to AndroidX

This year, Google rebranded the support Android libraries to Android Jetpack (aka AndroidX) [https://developer.android.com/jetpack/]. Particularly pertinent to developers was how they repackaged all the libraries. Not only have their maven coordinates changed [https://developer.android.com/jetpack/androidx/migrate#artifact_mappings], but the package names for

politics

Edina City Council Election (2018)

Last year I moved from Minneapolis to a neighboring suburb, Edina. One of the downsides of moving was that I would no longer get local political coverage from the amazing Naomi Kritzer [https://naomikritzer.com/], who each year writes up detailed reports on twin cities-area elections. While I can still

rxjava

ConnectableObservable: So Hot Right Now

ConnectableObservable [http://reactivex.io/RxJava/javadoc/io/reactivex/observables/ConnectableObservable.html] does not care when you subscribe to it; instead, it only begins its work when connect() is called. With that in mind, what is the output of the following? val connectableObservable = Observable.just("Hello!").publish() connectableObservable .subscribeOn(

android

Exploring Spannable Performance

I've been working on a new markdown handler for Trello Android. It uses commonmark-java [https://github.com/atlassian/commonmark-java] to parse an abstract syntax tree [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_syntax_tree], which is then converted into a single, complex Spannable. That Spannable is constructed piece-by-piece from

remote

Hear Me Talkin' To Ya: Thoughts on Remote Communication

Trello is a remote-friendly company, with over 60% of the company remote. Atlassian, which acquired us last year, is mostly colocated. As I've spent more time with Atlassians from other parts of the company, I've often been asked the same question: how do Trellists manage to

android

How to Screw Over Your Beta Users Without Really Trying

An addendum to this week's post about releasing buggy apps [https://blog.danlew.net/2018/03/13/how-to-release-a-buggy-app-and-live-to-tell-the-tale/] : a story of how everything can go wrong. Trello Android [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.trello] has a beta program filled with lovely beta testers who

android

How to Release a Buggy App (And Live to Tell the Tale)

Bugs! No matter how many times I decree that my coworkers and I must stop writing bugs, we keep on doing it anyways. Even worse, sometimes those bugs make it into production, where users run into them! The fact of the matter is, you are going to someday release a

rxjava

When you don't need a map

Here's a sketch of how one could listen to connectivity changes on Android via an Observable of NetworkInfo [https://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/NetworkInfo.html]: val networkInfo: Observable<NetworkInfo> = ... networkInfo .map { it.isConnected } .subscribe { onConnectivityChange(it) } While it works as expected, I would argue

android

Notifications in Android 8.1

Last time I wrote about notification channels [https://blog.danlew.net/2017/09/06/working-with-android-notification-channels/] I described a complicated solution to create the best balance between automatic bundling vs. not annoying the daylights out of the user: > * Have as few channels as possible make noise by default. * Use summaries

android

Year in Review (2017)

ICYMI (or more likely, in case I want a reference), here's all the public stuff I've done in the past year. This year, I purposefully avoided traveling to speak at conferences. Writing talks, traveling, and attending conferences takes up a huge chunk of time and I