What 2 Years of Android Development Have Taught Me the Hard Way
I still remember that day back in 2014 when I decided to
start Android development, and that was one of the best decisions I took in my
life. It has been around two and a half years now and I had the chance to learn
and un-learn a lot of things in Android.
Initially when I started, I didn’t have a mentor or someone
who could guide me to do things the right way. I did a LOT of mistakes and also
wasted a lot of time doing and later rectifying them.
Later, after one and a half years, I got the chance to work
with some really talented and experienced Android developers, who guided me and
helped me shape things in a much better way. Both of these phases helped me
learn a hell lot of things in the HARD way. I learned what TO DO and most
importantly what NOT TO DO.
In this article, I will be sharing some of the gems that I
have collected in these years. It might help someone to get started faster and
not repeat the mistakes that I once did.
Disclaimer: I will mainly be focussing on Android and some
concepts of programming and product development in this article, so if you are
not familiar with any of these, you might not want to read any further. Others,
just dive in. :-)
1. Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
Initially, I had a bad idea of not using open-source
libraries. Whatever I needed, I just wanted to make it myself. It’s was
seriously a terrible idea.
If you have a problem while developing your app, and if that
problem has been solved by someone else before and in a good way, why not use
that? You can save yourself a lot of time.
Focus more on the core business logic of your app. If you
want to make network calls in your app, you don’t need to make a Retrofit
yourself.
2. Choose Libraries Wisely
Check the number of stars that particular library has, the
more the better. Check if the author of that library have also created some
other popular libraries as well. Check the issues (both open and closed), which
can give you a better idea of how robust and stable the library is in
production.
If you can afford the time, you should dive into the code of
that library and check yourself if its really worth it.
You just want to ensure that the code you are going to use
is reliable, bug-free and high-quality.
3. Sit, Take a Cup of Coffee and Read More Code
We spent most of our time reading others code than writing
ourselves. If you are not doing that, START today.
Whatever code you are able to write today is only because
you have read and learned something, somewhere, someday. It’s just a reflection
of what you already know. You can only grow and improve yourself by reading and
learning from other’s work.
The great thing about Android is that it is a completely
open-source platform. Dive into the code and check how they have implemented
the framework. There are thousands of open-source libraries in Github. Just
pick a library and see how the developer have implemented it.
Bonus: Here is a curated list of some of the best libraries
and here is a list of almost all open-source Android apps available. You are
welcome :-)
4. For God’s Sake, Maintain Proper Coding Standards
If you compare coding with writing, then coding standards is
like your handwriting.
As you would be reading more of others code, other people
will also be reading a lot of your code and you don’t want to scare the shit
out of them, do you? And if you are working in an organization and
collaborating with other developers heavily, do take special care about it.
Write short, clean and readable code that YOU and people
reading your code would enjoy thoroughly. Your code should read like a story.
Code is Poetry.
Don’t complain if you write a piece of code and your
colleagues don’t talk to you for a few days.
5. You Need ProGuard, Yes, You Need It!
Never ever, ever make the mistake of releasing your app on
the Play Store without using ProGuard. ProGuard not only minifies your code,
but it obfuscates your code making it harder for reverse-engineers to
understand, replicate and manipulate it.
Its absolutely free and comes bundled with the Android SDK,
and there is absolutely no reason for you not to use it.
I have seen several developers releasing their app on the
market without ProGuard. It should not take more than a few hours for a
not-so-skilled hacker to manipulate an the app released without Proguard.
Pro Tip: But if you want top-notch security, then ProGuard
is like a cardboard while you need a safe, and here it is, DexGuard.
6. Use a Proper Architecture
You will forever thank yourself for choosing a proper
architecture in the first place.
You can use MVP (Model-View-Presenter) architecture which
can decouple your code into different easy-to-manage layers thereby improving
code flexibility and greatly reducing maintenance time.
There is a great demo project for you to start. And if you
are having a hard time grasping it, here is a detailed guide for the beginners.
Bonus: Do give a check at this, this and most importantly
this. All of these can greatly help you in implementing MVP in your project.
7. User Interface Is like a Joke, If You Have to Explain It,
It’s Bad
If you work for any organization playing the role of “just”
an Android developer, you probably won’t need to be too concerned about this,
as there are UI/UX designers to take care of this.
But if you are an individual developer, you need to get this
straight into your head. I have seen developers creating really good apps with
great functionality, but the UI looks horrible and the UX makes it a pain to
use.
Design a clean, simple and beautiful interface that is easy
on the eyes. You should not just think like a developer, rather you should
concentrate on igniting the hidden designer inside you.
Try to create a lasting impression on your users by
designing a beautiful UI, so that they keep coming back to your app more often
than others and tend to convert more (buy your premium version, maybe).
You should get a kick by removing elements from your design,
rather than adding. Keep it clean and minimal.
8. Analytics Is Your Best Friend
If you want to create a truly amazing app, you need to
heavily rely on analytics tools to analyze the performance and usage of
different parts of your app.
By analytics, I refer to both crash reporting and app usage
tracking and you need both of them.
Whatever you do, you can never make something perfect. When
real users will start using your app on a variety of Android devices and on
various Android versions available, you will even see some of your best written
code to fall flat on the ground.
Crash reporting tools can help you to track and fix them,
one crash at a time.
You also need to start thinking like a marketer and analyze
the usage of various portions of your app. This is what will help you bridge
the gap between what you made and what your users’ actually want.
Pro Tip: I strongly recommend trying out the crash reporting
tool in Instabug. You are surely going to love it.
9. Be a Marketing Ninja
If you are an individual developer, you have to think beyond
being “just a developer” and have to understand marketing as well.
I have seen good products fail due to lack of proper
marketing, and the not-so-good ones become massively successful just because of
great marketing.
If you are serious about your work and want it to reach a
large audience, you need to invest your time and money in properly marketing
your app. But before starting your marketing campaigns, ensure that your app is
absolutely stable with all features ready. You want maximum conversions from
every dime you spend, right?
Spend time researching who your competitors are and how you
can beat them. Identify the ones you can compete immediately and the ones you
have to keep aside for a future fight.
10. It’s Time to Optimize Your App
This is something that most of us generally don’t do, but
you should and you need to.
There is a big difference between writing code and writing
“optimized” code. Write code that runs quickly, takes less memory and consumes
less device storage.
An unoptimized app works well under normal circumstances,
but when put to different stressful situations, it can show you its true
colors.
Check the amount of memory used by your app and look for
memory leaks. Remember, a tiny leak can sink a big ship. Spend time on
understanding how the Garbage Collector works in Java, create heap dumps and
analyze your live objects.
Pro Tip: Use Leak Canary to detect your memory leaks. It can
save you a lot of time by automating this task for you.
11. Save More Than 5 Hours Every Week with Gradle Builds
It’s very very likely that you are using Android Studio to
develop Android apps and using Gradle as your build system. Gradle is great but
its slow and it becomes slower than a snail when your project size starts to
grow in size.
I remember the countless hours I have wasted just sitting
and waiting for the Gradle builds to finish. On heavy work days, I easily
wasted around an hour on just Gradle builds and that’s like 5 hours a week
draining down the gutter.
But, there are ways to speed it up too.
You can follow this and this post to significantly improve
your build speeds. My build time dropped from 4 minutes to less than 30 seconds
after proper optimization.
12. Test, Test and When You Are Done, Test Again!
There is nothing more important than testing. This is
something that should be at the top of your list.
Test your app as thoroughly as possible. Spend time for
writing automated test cases. Create various stressful situations for your app
and see if it can survive.
I had once made the mistake of releasing my app out of hurry
and didn’t spend proper time testing it. I was waiting for my users to face
bugs, report it and then I would go and fix them.
Never, ever, ever do that. You might save a day, or two, or
a week by cutting down time from testing, but will probably have to spend more
than twice later.
Don’t do anything out of hurry, take your time and think
long term. Be a visionary. Sow now, reap later.
13. Android Fragmentation is a Devil in Disguise
Fragmentation is one of the biggest problems in Android and
Google seems reluctant to fix it, but you have to live with it.
There are a huge variety of Android devices with different
screen sizes and hardware specifications from a plethora of different device
manufactures who customize the OS to their heart’s content.
Added to that are the various Android versions where Google
adds/removes API functionality out of nowhere to increase your workload ever
further (an example here).
For example, not a single Android developer has finished an
app without using SharedPreferences API. It’s so common, yet it was broken in
Samsung Galaxy S with Android 2.2 (bug report here).
Spend more time creating different layouts for different
screen sizes. Test on different devices, having different versions, different
specifications and from different OEMs.
Never assume something would work, just because it seems so.
14. Start using Git, Today!
If you are still not using Git, go ahead and start using it
right away.
When I started Android development, I was unfortunate enough
not to know what the fudge Git was. I used to copy my entire project everyday
and keep one backup in my hard drive and another in the cloud. Seems foolish?
Yes, it absolutely was.
Git can dramatically improve your workflow. If someone asks
me to name a tool that I use everyday and can’t stop using? It’s Git and Git
every time.
And probably after using it for a few days you would fall in
love with it and want to know how Git works internally, so here it is ready for
you.
And after some time, you would be starting a big project
yourself and get confused on how you should maintain a proper branching model,
so here you go.
Bonus: If you are just starting out and can’t afford to pay
the monthly subscription fee for maintaining private repositories in GitHub,
you can try BitBucket which lets you do just that for free.
15. Make it Difficult for the Hackers
The open-source nature of Android is what makes it
vulnerable to attacks. Every Android app can be decompiled, reverse-engineered,
ripped open, analyzed and manipulated with ease.
You don’t want that to happen to your app, right?
You should know how to securely store API keys locally in
your app. If you are dealing with sensitive data of the users, then you must
know how to encrypt them, what algorithm to choose (secure yet fast).
You should also store the encryption keys securely either in
the server or locally (if needed). You should prevent your app data from being
backed up using the ADB (Android Debug Bridge). If you are storing sensitive
data in the database, consider obfuscating it.
If your app has a premium version which gets cracked and
gets released for free. You would incur a serious loss in business, right?
There are several things you can do to prevent your app from
getting tampered. There is nothing like 100% security. Any skilled and
determined hacker with the right resources, tools and patience can crack your
app.
All you want to do is make it difficult, rather very
difficult for the hacker to crack it.
16. Develop On a Low-End Device
Everyone loves to use a high-end Android smartphone, so do
I. But remember to keep it for your personal use only and never use it for
development purposes.
A high-end device will hide a lot of flaws while developing
your app. Suppose you are doing something in the UI thread which makes its way
for a laggy UI, but on a powerful device, you may never ever notice that.
An old, low-end device, dumped with lots of apps makes it
ideal for a development device.
17. Invest in Learning Design Patterns
This is an investment that will pay you forever.
While developing big and complex apps, you will face some
common problems which have probably been solved before by someone more
competent than you, that’s when design patterns comes into play.
Start spending some time right from today to learn the Java
Design Patterns. Here is a Github project that demonstrates all the design
patterns known to mankind.
To start off, learn the most important ones like Singleton,
Adapter, Factory Method, Iterator, Dependency Injection, Event Driven
Architecture, Builder, Callback, Strategy, Facade and Producer Consumer.
Seems like a lot? It actually isn’t. You will start loving
them once you dive in.
Pro Tip: Read books like GoF’s Design Patterns, Refactoring
by Martin Fowler and Effective Java by Joshua Bloch.
18. It’s Time to Give Back
We all have got a lot of help from people around us and from
the Internet. [Source]-https://blog.aritraroy.in/what-my-2-years-of-android-development-have-taught-me-the-hard-way-52b495ba5c51
Enroll
for Android Certification in Mumbai at Asterix Solution to develop your career
in Android. Make your own android app after Android Course provides under guidance of expert Trainers.
Comments
Post a Comment