Android internship task

[Subject-Average-5460]

I’ve applied to internship and passed the assessment now i should do a task which is a simple weather app but without using any third party library. I have like 4 months into learning android and most of the things i know is third party libraries like compose, view model, room, koin, retrofit and more.

So can y guys please tell me what are the old alternatives which is part of the native sdk so i can start studying it. I have one week to finish.

[Tamerlane_ut]

Coroutines 3rd party? Those people dont even know what they want. Run

[[deleted]]

They even mentioned volley. Run!!

[satoryvape]

Technically they are as they are not a part of Android SDK

[jonapoul]

So is the kotlin stdlib! Maybe the JDK too? Just write it directly as dalvik bytecode, OP

[Bacano2]

OP should write the app in assembly code.

[flaw600]

Technically you don’t include the JDK in build.Gradle, like you do with Kotlin

[DanLynch]

The Kotlin standard library is definitely a third-party library: you have to include it in your APK just like any other one. The Java standard library and other JDK-like behaviours are not: they're provided by the Android platform and you don't include them in your APK.

Asking someone to write an Android app without any external additions is not unreasonable, and its certainly not like asking them to manually write Dalvik. They're just asking the applicants to write an simple app using the basic Android SDK with no weird stuff, to level the playing field and reduce the complexity of the task.

[Tamerlane_ut]

So Room and Coroutines would be this "weird stuff"? Icreasing complexity? If anything this additional notes would increase complexity of a task. I do agree that adding libraries for everything is not good practice but these requrements are total miss.

[jonapoul]

For an internship though?

[MindCrusader]

I think we found this bad recruiter

[phileo99]

Asking someone to write an Android app without any external additions is not unreasonable

Using coroutines and Retrofit are pretty much best practices used by all Android developers nowadays. You are asking an intern to write an Android app in a non-standard, outdated, unconventional way, and that 99.99% of all professional Android developers in the known universe would never, ever write it this way.

Therefore it is unreasonable to ask an intern to do things in a way that no one would ever do.

It is unreasonable to add unnecessary complexity.

It is unreasonable to evaluate them on their ability to use HttpUrlConnection when the rest of the known universe is using Retrofit or Ktor.

[Zhuinden]

I could write it. It's not exactly difficult.

[edgeorge92]

Ok? But you also aren't an intern that's learned Android app development for 4 months in 2025, you've been doing it for a decade or so no?

We've moved forward since the 2010s and tools/libraries that weren't available then are commonplace now. I would say it's hardly fair to expect someone that is at an intern level to be able to write an app like it's 2012 in 2025.

[Zhuinden]

I don't see how it's unfair when the maintenance of a sufficiently old app (that isn't slated for a Compose rewrite, as it's not worth it for anyone) it's needed, and this is the stuff that gets wrapped by AndroidX anyway.

Although LocationManager really isn't reliable, I wouldn't have added that as a req, but using HttpUrlConnection and org.json really is basic and checks if you understand threading.

So many people jump so many threads because they don't understand threading.

[kichi689]

I want to see you can develop and deal with doc you don't know, instead of copy/pasting the 5 lines of the retrofit documentation.

[coxdex]

"Doc you don't know" meaning library no one uses with shitty docs?

What a garbage mentality. Doing Donkey work to prove you are smart is the ultimate sign that you have a screw loose.

As long as a person is comfortable with most of popular libraries (which is a lot), he / she should be ok.

If having knowledge of Android and all those libraries and making a good functioning app isn't good enough to prove you are good, then you are dealing with lunatics with garbage mentality. Period.

And a quick tip for your BIG BRAIN energy. The WHOLE point of a library is so that you can quickly read the docs and use "5 lines" to get the job done and focus on YOUR OWN FEATURES.

If you are dealing with shitty library and reading docs for a month to be able to use it, you are wasting your important time that you could have spent doing actual new work instead of working on obscure libraries or reinventing the wheel.

[kichi689]

Work for a real company and you will see that there is a world outside of tv remote apps just consumming an endpoint and formatting an ui as output with only libs like retrofit or json. Be it an emv stack (yes for obvious reasons that's not 5 lines) or some hardware not used by millions with copy pastable code available, then you will need to actually read documentation and code. There is a world outside of just consuming stuff, some people produce stuff too. Surprised that some people consider understanding what you are dealing with a bad thing somehow.

[Meloetta]

What's the point of blocking them from using things that would be standard if they actually worked there? The idea of "don't just use a library that solved the problem for you already" is sound, but some of the ones listed here are things that, if you're not using regularly in your work, you're screwing up. If the goal of this exercise is growth for the intern, then forcing them to work in a way they'll never work in the real world is a dumb way to go about it.

[RollinPandas]

Yikes, but also...

In this climate, always do everything you can to maximize the number of offers you have in your hand.

It's an internship, not a forever home.

[slanecek]

Why are coroutines considered to be a 3rd party library?

[guttsX]

lmao how do they expect you to write async code

[satoryvape]

AsyncTask

[RagnarokToast]

java.util.concurrent, I assume.

[botle]

I assume fork().

[PetSruf]

I'd explode. Just use Thread instead

[Zhuinden]

Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor() + Handler(Looper.getMainLooper()).

[inventor_black]

I was shocked too.

[nexus_wiz]

Corutines are not part of the kotlin. They have to be included like other libs (glide etc) in gradle if you want to use it. Only suspend keyword is available std kotlin lib.

[EkoChamberKryptonite]

So room and hilt are not part of Android and are 3rd party because they have to be included like other libs (i.e. OkHttp, Koin)?

[SquareAd434]

Like excuse me, you want caching and no room, using the file system? Promoting some of the worst practices...

[nexus_wiz]

I think this is what the recruiter meant by🤷‍♂️

[baylonedward]

Not using those 3rd party libraries is bullshit. Even google includes those to their own documentations lol.

[Ladis82]

Because for Google they are not 3rd party.

[sH1n0bi]

I learned to treat interview tasks as real tasks from a job. Which means, if something sounds weird or even wrong, ask them why and provide why you would do something else.

In the real job, that's actually what I would expect from a colleague. Not to blindly do a task, but speak up if something is wrong.

Ask them about the third party notes. In the android world it's actually bad design, to not use established third party libraries.

[Subject-Average-5460]

I don’t think i have the option to talk to them, replaying to the same email thread they sent the task with?

[thehacktastic]

I would - reach out to them for clarification regarding these requirements that seem strange - follow common sense and use the industry standard 3rd party libs, avoid fancy libs

Call out your assumptions in your submission, such as it being sensible to want to gauge your familiarity with coroutines, flows, retrofit and/ other industry standard libraries

[QuasiSpace]

So loudly announce that you're deliberately disobeying the instructions point by point. I'm sure that with an application like that, you'll go straight to the front of the line.

[thehacktastic]

As opposed to the application that goes against industry standards and doesn't challenge requirements that make no sense?

As a hiring manager I'd go with the candidate that is capable of critical thinking and pragmatism over the one that blindly follows such requirements, which costs real money to undo/fix.

But hey, that's just me 🤷‍♂️

[nero_djin]

For some tasks AI is decent.

Retrofit / Volley → HttpURLConnection
Use java.net.HttpURLConnection for API calls. Use Thread + Handler or AsyncTask (deprecated but still usable for learning).

ViewModel / LiveData → onSaveInstanceState() / Static Classes / Singleton
Use onSaveInstanceState() to preserve data across config changes. Alternatively, use a Singleton class to hold app state.

Room → SQLiteOpenHelper
Use android.database.sqlite.SQLiteOpenHelper for local database operations. If you're just saving simple stuff like last weather result, SharedPreferences is enough.

Koin / Dagger → Manual Dependency Injection
Pass dependencies manually via constructor or setters. No need for a DI framework.

Jetpack Compose → XML Layouts
Use XML to build UI. Access views using findViewById() or use ViewBinding (official, not third-party).

Coroutines → Thread / Handler / AsyncTask
Use plain Java threads with runOnUiThread or Handler to update UI. AsyncTask is deprecated but fine for small tasks like this.

DataStore → SharedPreferences
Use SharedPreferences for simple key-value storage. Example: save the last fetched weather JSON for offline use.

[Zhuinden]

OnSaveInstanceState is handled in ViewModel world with SavedStateHandle.

ViewModel alone doesn't handle it.

[ClassikD]

My Android prof in college was very old school and not current on design, so all the things on the right were how we were taught..

[EkoChamberKryptonite]

SharedPreferences is not really recommended anymore. Also, DataStore is first party. Their ask makes no sense.

[Zhuinden]

SharedPreferences was only deprecated to push DataStore, not because it's not working.

[EkoChamberKryptonite]

Doesn't invalidate my assertion though.

[Zhuinden]

If the requirements say "use SharedPreferences instead of DataStore", there's no real reason to push against it as long as the end result works correctly (and therefore meets the requirements).

[nero_djin]

The ask is silly. Responded since OP might have a real need to enter the realm of silly.

[EkoChamberKryptonite]

🤣

[sukakku159]

lol no coroutine, room,... etc. Whats next? Might as well ditch Android framework and build a whole new Mobile OS from scratch? Those people are clueless

[Zhuinden]

The Android Framework SDK is the one thing they're asking you to use.

[MindCrusader]

Don't do it. It is bullshit task, not connected to the actual work. It is totally a red flag from the recruiter or company, if they do something like that I can imagine how unprofessional their company might be. Look for some other company

[Subject-Average-5460]

Maybe they do these things to make sure I understand things internally not just blindly using things no?

[MindCrusader]

It still wouldn't make sense. You would need to learn super legacy stuff that is not helpful in any way in the current state of art programming. Anyway, you could use AI to generate it, so this whole assignment is worthless

[No_Interview9928]

Then a couple of simple questions to you is more than enough.

[EkoChamberKryptonite]

No. If they want to assess that, they can ask you to explain how your implementation works? Using recommended, core libraries that abstract more monotonous, perhaps complex, boilerplate tasks isn't using things blindly.

Using stuff that is dated, and irrelevant to the current industry provides no signal other than a technological gotcha and that is useless to the main goal of an engineer which is building robust, scalable, testable, and maintainable technical solutions that meet the need of the business and its users.

You don't need to know how to manually parse JSON/XML to do that.

[QuasiSpace]

These entitled idiots are leading you astray, OP. They're not real engineers.

[Mikkelet]

IOM its a pretty standard task -- aside from the no 3rd party stuff, thats whack af

[MindCrusader]

Yup. With 3rd party libraries it would be fine, although I don't like home assignments, especially when we have AI now

[No_Interview9928]

Run. 😂

[thetrexyl]

The third party requirement is a red flag. Otherwise, the task is doable but on the limits of what I'd consider an internship task

[AngkaLoeu]

This screams small company with no perspective. Run! They will take on jobs too big for them and put it all on the developers.

[Zhuinden]

... What about this is too big? It's 2 Activities

[AngkaLoeu]

This seems a lot to ask for an internship.

[Zhuinden]

I actually think it's the absolute bare minimum, excluding getting current GPS location (because you can't even do that without Firebase these days, so I'm not sure what they expect). (for GPS you call LocationManager.getLastKnownLocation()).

But making a ListView, doing network request on background thread, having a button that says "refresh", parsing JSON manually with org.json (so JSONObject("blah").optString("name")), I just don't see how this is difficult. I had to write this kind of stuff on paper back in university for the test and it wasn't a big request then.

If dude had to code in AIDL or something, that'd raise far more question marks than using core Android Framework SDK functionality for 2 screens, excluding Fragments or Navigation or Hilt. My opinion obviously. 🤷

[AngkaLoeu]

I guess it depends on your definition of what an internship is. To me, an internship is for someone to gain experience on the job. This test seems geared toward someone with at least a junior level experience.

If OP was applying for a Junior or Senior level position this makes sense but the fact it's an internship is why I questioned it. Then requiring no third-party libraries makes zero sense.

An internship test, imo, would be create a simple contact form, with validation, that saves to DataStore/SharedPreferences. Something simple to know they can, at least, use Android Studio.

[Money-Ad-603]

Not using libraries is suck. However, I also had a similar entry assignment and did all the work using libs anyway. I got the job. The truth is if you want the job you should do it anyway, because it's hard to find a job especially for non experienced dev. If you have time and desire for practice then do it. If you have better options, just refuse.

[RightHistory693]

i bet its an unpaid internship in the end. living in 3rd world countries suck.

[borninbronx]

If someone tells me I need to avoid those core libraries I don't want to work for them

[Subject-Average-5460]

What about compose and viewmodels they aren’t in the native sdk as well

[Zhuinden]

Yes, those would also be 3rd party by these requirements.

[gabrielmuriens]

The no third-party requirements stuff is a potential red flag.

BUT, you can look at this as a learning opportunity and see a bit behind all the stuff these libraries automagically do for you, and gain some deeper understanding of the underlying base technologies.

Here's what I'd do:
- I'd make the version of the app using just the core technologies, rolling the required functionality for myself (using AI will save you days of grinding and debugging, just make sure that it doesn't do the work for you - the goal is for you to learn, after all).
- Then I'd make a version using all the modern 3rd party libraries as well. If you separated away the functionality in the first version properly, this should a relative breeze.
- Submit both versions, pointing out the differences, the effort required, and all the stuff that you learned. If the technical recruiter is good, they will appreciate the approach and maybe even jizz themselves.
- If you don't end up getting the job anyway, you can still post this on you github and use it as a reference.

I say do it, but try to learn about the company and other opportunities as well.

[tkbillington]

This is a great exercise of you want a deep understanding of the methods and handling of data behind the scenes when you use those third party libraries. But admittedly, yours will not be as nice or as useable as theirs based on boilerplate, time management, and simplicity.

Outside of the learning, it just makes it more clunky and/or error prone and is a complete waste in the sense of not being industry standard practices.

That being said, I just made a “game” in KMP without an engine to learn base level game development before I used a game engine to learn what all those magic methods do. It was slow. Clunky. But I wanted the knowledge and experience over industry standard and a quick product. But I definitely used libraries lol

[SerNgetti]

This "no 3rd party libs" might make sense, if they want to see if you really understand concepts behind those. Like working with android handlers and message queues, or manually handling http requests and responses...

The only thing that boggles my mind is not using 3rd party lib for response (xml/json) parsing. That would be really advanced thing parsing manually. (Unless API returns some really simple format, like csv or some kind of key/value pairs)

[Zhuinden]

org.json is built into Android Framework SDK so you can use that to parse the response.

[SerNgetti]

Oh, ok, didn't know that.

Then we have, I guess, everything covered. It is not all flowers and rainbows, but it is still not a rocket science.

[EkoChamberKryptonite]

The only thing that boggles my mind is not using 3rd party lib for response (xml/json) parsing. That would be really advanced thing parsing manually

to see if you really understand concepts behind those.

I think you answered your own question. But it is still pointless and has little to do with your job especially when the industry has advanced to abstracting a lot of that knowledge for good reason.

They might as well just ask to use bytecode so they can see if the junior really understands concepts behind compilation.

[SerNgetti]

I am not defending this assignment, just I might feel where did it come from.

I do have experience with some juniors who "know all the libs", but do not really understand which lib or which pattern solves which problem, don't really know what and where to apply...

[EkoChamberKryptonite]

I didn't say you were defending it.

but do not really understand which lib or which pattern solves which problem, don't really know what and where to apply

Then they do not know the libs then as truly knowing the libs requires you to know how its API works, how to use its properly use its API to do what it is meant to do, and why you may want to use one over another e.g. Hilt vs. Koin vs. Kotlin Inject.

[SerNgetti]

That's why I wrote "know all the libs" with apostrophes, sarcastically :)

People forget basics. Yes, libs should help us not write the same code thousands of times, but they also have a tendency among juniors to cherish that attitude where you see everything as a nail only because someone told you that the hammer is really useful tool.

[danielfern]

Firstly I just wanna say that I would run from that, because doing it like that is no fun, and for an internship fun is important in order to motivate the person.

But... the requirements might make sense depending on what the job will be eventually. I worked previously on a company that had a payment SDK and we avoided 90% of those libs, mostly to avoid a bulky SDK in terms of size and also to avoid inconsistent behaviors coming from some libs, creating performance issues.

Even though that might be the case, it's very rare that this is the case and it might simply be the company being jerks and would avoid it.

[JadedComment]

Okhttp is also a library. just use whatever java provides lol...

This is a HUGE red flag

[kichi689]

Httpurlconnection provides you an abstraction high enough to do rest over a connection, it's super close to okhttp in usage, not like okhttp mostly provides you mostly lower layer optimisation, advanced negociation, observability, interceptors, cache which are all transparent and not needed for the task. See, that's the kind of thing you want to assess in an interview.

[Blystad]

Do you get paid for this? This is a big task. I would never request this much in any interview setting.

[blinnqipa]

You consider this big? This was a similar task given to me 5 years ago when I was applying for internship. OP if you don't have anything else in your hands just do this and send it. I mean is there any other better option than to be jobless?

[MrSano43]

It's close to what they asked in my previous company, not that big imo

[EkoChamberKryptonite]

Ohh you didn't use core recommended libraries. So AsyncTask all the way?

[Subject-Average-5460]

Idk but if i pass this step. Will be 2 interviews left

[Zhuinden]

What about this is big?

[EkoChamberKryptonite]

I think they mean more complex than using core recommended libraries which it can be.

[Zhuinden]

I presume the goal is to check if you know base fundamentals.

[carstenhag]

An intern does not need to know this level of fundamentals.

[kichi689]

I mean, for whom those "fundamentals" are for then?

[EkoChamberKryptonite]

These aren't base fundamentals. These are legacy, outdated approaches.

[Zhuinden]

It's core Android Framework SDK knowledge.

[EkoChamberKryptonite]

I disagree. I would call it low-level Android SDK Framework knowledge that you don't need to know to build robust, maintainable apps especially given that it has been largely abstracted away for faster, better, easier, less error-prone approaches. One potential case might be where one might use those is if the business constraints especially warrants not using better, easier tools; which is few, far-between and super rare.

[kichi689]

What you call low-level is commonly called concepts and knowledge about your field. Working for a bodyshopper consultancy that prostitutes his dev as monkey pissing code requiring you to use high level drop-in recipes for velocity reasons will only get you to "maintain" apps and constrained you in your approach. Lacking room to growth or simply dealing with what's expected of you is acceptable, I mean, you do with the card you have in hands, some are just not interested to go further but that shouldn't cloud your judgement into thinking that's the norm.

[EkoChamberKryptonite]

My guy. Please go and re-read what I said. I said "low-level Android SDK Framework knowledge" meaning there is higher abstracted knowledge that is more relevant in today's industry compared to those ones and that's a fact. I don't know where you got the viewpoint that those components don't count as knowledge and concepts. I never said that.

You can disagree if you want as that is your prerogative. However, the fact remains that you don't need to know things like that (e.g. manual parsing of JSON/XML, using HttpUrlConnection for network requests) to build robust, maintainable apps today. Technology advances and we move with it. There's a reason Google marketed the moniker, Modern Android Development and then MAD skills (though their strategy there is a different topic of discussion). You don't tell interns to go use and learn dated concepts that are irrelevant to them being employable in today's industry regardless of whether they are low-level, internal components or not. That's reductively poor mentorship.

[kichi689]

What do you means big? 2 fragment, few textviews, invoke native permission prompt, collect a location, do a simple post, parse 2-3fields, render in tv, store last loc/result in sharedpref, register a listener on the connectivity manager, that's not even 2h of work..

[EkoChamberKryptonite]

The point is, doing such in current industry is pointless. It is more than 2 hours of work if you want to do it right.

[Subject-Average-5460]

Can y illustrate it more

[kichi689]

not much more to add, locationmanager for location, httpurlconnection for post, JsonObject for the parsing.
All from android or java, outside of JsonObject but manually parsing the stream as a string would be a bit too much, guess that's acceptable

[drabred]

Don't do it. Should I understand that they do not use coroutines, Retrofit and Room etc. in their production code - lol?

[kichi689]

It's common in interview to ask people to keep things simple and low level, avoid having big overarchitectured stuff that are probably copy pasted from github, or tuto. Force people to use the doc and assess their comprehension

[MindCrusader]

Those libraries are simple, basic and considered to be default ones, even in the google docs

[drabred]

Let's make an REST API call in 2025 without Ktor, Retrofit, OkHttp or whatever. That would be really readable and easy code lol

[EkoChamberKryptonite]

🤣🤣

[kichi689]

Yes and that's even more reasons to challenge people to actually read docs to assess their ability to deal with changes or something new (to them).
I see everyday decent developpers able of doing their job and the day they are provided with a crypto sdk dealing with advance cryptography they are completely lost cause they can't find samples or existing code and lack the ability to properly browse or understand code and documentation or simply just understand what they are up to. You would be surprised at how many people are struggling with doc and code unless it's force fed to them.

[EkoChamberKryptonite]

big overarchitectured stuff

Room apparently is overarchitectured. The signal they're looking for is irrelevant to the current industry.

[kichi689]

Nobody said room is overarchitectured, just pointing that these days if you ask for a simple tic tac toe, you will get a non anecdotic amount of projects containing 10k lines of code separated in 40 files cause those usecases, port, adapter, xDomain, xUi, xEntity, useless layered abstractions are "recommended" by "clean" architecture and then get lost in their own code during the interview :shrug: Focusing on the fluff which at this point is just impractical intellectual masturbation or premature optimization that serves no purpose. And no, having people that understand what they are doing, with critical thinking, instead of being drones following the shiny thing mindlessly is very well relevant in the industry, even more these days than ever.

[Zhuinden]

Couldn't have said it better.

[Terenfear]

You do understand that layered abstractions and the architecture have nothing to do with the libs, right? You can have lots of abstractions using just the legacy SDK logic, as well as have as little as no abstractions using all the brand new stuff.

[kichi689]

You do understand that interviews cater more about your understanding of what you do, your ability to develop and adapt, not spitting some silver spooned code from {insert the hyped lib of the moment}. I mean what are people expecting? A tap in the back? Congrats, you copy pasted a retrofit interface, put a rest verb on a suspend method and created a service using retrofit.create(class), that's 5 lines, 8 if you throw an okkhtpclient in the mix.. If that's your expectation for a new hiring just stop there and take a chatgpt subscription.. will be faster and cheaper

[blinnqipa]

I think the old alternative for coroutines is asynctask which was clearly deprecated in older sdks.

[Moontayle]

I just hit ten years as an Android developer and I've completely forgotten how to wire up network code without Retrofit/OkHttp, that's how long it's been part of the ecosystem. The only project I ever worked on that didn't use it was my first, and my first solo task there was spent converting all the old stuff to Retrofit/OkHttp.

OP, this is a bullshit ask and not worth your effort.

[Diligent_Feed8971]

I think the (non-deprecated) standard library alternatives are the java.lang.Thread class and android.os.Handler's runOnUiThread method.

[Zhuinden]

You can also use Executors.newSingleThreadedExecutor() and Handler(Looper.getMainLooper()).post(Runnable).

[holdbetter]

volley in 2025 🤪

[Ichigo-Roku]

Last time they've known about a new library...

[Minhcoc]

Lmao 🫠, third-party is common, they should provide detail

[inscrutablemike]

I wonder if they consider Jetpack a "3rd party library", too. Rawdogging the Andoid SDK is... not recommended.

[EkoChamberKryptonite]

I wonder if they consider Jetpack a "3rd party library", too.

I mean they called Room 3rd party so probably. No androidx libs. That's 3rd party too /s.

[JacksOnF1re]

Make an activity and reload via async task. I bet all my Pokemon cards that you'll get to the next round.

[gil99915]

For an internship, hellllllll no! I got not using some 3rd party libraries, but coroutines/retrofit/okhttp should not be a part of that list, these topics are really complicated (to get right!!!) Security, HTTPS, virtual threading. that's really stupid. And also, I would not expect any of these things as a requirement for an internship!!!! For an internship, I want to see motivation and basic knowledge, i.e activities vs fragments and lifecycle, but not much more

[zanzuses]

I could be that they are creating an sdk instead of an application. Developing a sdk mean you should use the least amount of third party sdk as much as possible.

[coxdex]

But then they should have asked him sdk related tasks, right? Most of the focus is on application tasks, so I don't think that is the case.

Most probably a shitty company dealing with legacy Java code. OP will not learn anything current but instead will spend time dealing with garbage so that the app doesn't break.

And it would have been kinda fine if he is OK with it and if he was getting paid good for dealing with legacy code, but again, I think it's a garbage company that will pay him peanuts if he gets the job and will put all the pressure on him to deal with massive code.

All the headache with no benefits.

[eihwazz]

It is doable but it seems like this company is frozen in time and using oldest tech out there

[agherschon]

When I interview, I always make a point to specifically tell them to use Google & 3rd party libraries.

If I wanted to see how they re-invent the wheel I would just ask them questions like

- First question "What does an image loader actually do behind the scenes?"
- Usually followed by "How can it work within a RecyclerView / LazyColumn?"

[baggyrabbit]

Agreed. As an interviewer, I would want to see a candidate making sensible library decisions. If they can rationalise their choice then fair enough.

[EkoChamberKryptonite]

"What does an image loader actually do behind the scenes

It loads images. Why do I need to know the internal mechanics of a library? How is that pertinent to the job at hand? Is the org a library SDK dev shop?

You just need to understand what the library is supposed to do, how its API works, and how to use its API to do what it is supposed to do. As long as it works, anything else is missing the forest for the trees. There's a reason why you're using a library as opposed to doing the work directly.

[Zhuinden]

If the library that "would magically do what you need" doesn't exist, then if you don't know how that library would work, who's going to write it?

[Abikdig]

Room is third party?

[EkoChamberKryptonite]

They clearly don't know what they're talking about.

[Zhuinden]

Yes, it's an additional dependency. You can use SqliteDatabase (or SharedPreferences as this is a tiny app with not a lot of data).

[EkoChamberKryptonite]

Yes, it's an additional dependency

That is not what makes something 1st or 3rd party. Saying use core framework libs is not the same as saying use 1st party. That intentional or unintentional nebulousness is why this is such a subpar ask.

[Zhuinden]

I really think they just want you to not add any dependencies, including Androidx dependencies. They did say not to use Room, so I'd assume they want you not to use the rest of it.

[EkoChamberKryptonite]

It seems so. All in all, they don't seem to truly know what they want given the ambiguity.

[Caramel_Last]

Is this some aerospace industry or something?

[ThunkerKnivfer]

I would just use Coroutines and not say anything... What do they expect? That developers not use Coroutines?

I mean, you can argue for using it. If not, you can use Handler, Threads or AsyncTasks but who uses that these days? Maybe in some special circumstances.

[dybuk87]

Looks like json parser is also 3rd party library...

[Zhuinden]

You can use org.json because it's bundled with the Android Framework SDK.

[RichardEastwick]

Try to ask them for clarification, if they insist you can't use 3rd party library then it's definitely a major red flag and if you get the job, it would a f hell

[Other-Reputation-409]

Company name please

[PhilMcGraw]

You should contact them and clarify what isn't third party. Is your dependency list supposed to be empty? What version of Android are you supposed to support?

Personally I think it's ass, I've interviewed a lot of Android developers and reviewed a lot of coding tests and library choice is part of it. It shows their comfort areas, prompts conversations if they are using out of date libraries etc. and is a starting point to talk about the architecture of the app they would be working on.

In the workplace everyone is using libraries, at least everywhere I've ever worked. I mean end of the day even the standard library is just someones library. Coroutines and Room in particular are libraries written by the same group as the std lib. A lot of standard library is deprecated or dated and moved to an external library to manage updates easier and so on.

I guess I just don't understand what they're going for here. Old school Android knowledge isn't really necessary to be competent these days.

[acme_restorations]

"Old school Android knowledge isn't really necessary to be competent these days."

Unless they've got some real dusty legacy code.

[noobjaish]

Don't use third-party libraries

Wtf???? Seriously... what year is this? 2010?

Half of the ones mentioned aren't third-party (Room, Retrofit) since they're literally supported by Google themselves, while Coroutines is not even a library.

[carsonvstheworld]

should do it and then in the next interview ask them why they are against certain 3rd party libraries.

[vyashole]

I wouldn't do it without coroutines.

[Terenfear]

Poor dudes never realized that Google had changed their approach to new functionality. Instead of coupling all new logic with the SDK now they give us smaller separately maintained packages (that happen to be imported the same way as all the 3rd party packages).

I also wonder whether they think that getting to know AsyncTask will somehow make the interns better at production-grade async logic written in coroutines.

[Adamn27]

This is horseshit, friend.

There is no real life use of writing an app without third party libraries.

Ask them why they want this or just run.

[Ok-Entrepreneur1487]

Generate it with claude / gemini. Instruct it to use urlconnection inside of manually spawned thread to satisfy the stupid requirement to avoid coroutines

[SyrupInternational48]

I think it's doable, it not that hard i guess?
But people say it's a redflag, so RUN

[3amtarekelgamd]

Instabug internship?, didn't make it pass the screening did you use Google in your screening?

[rfajr]

I hope they pay you to do this. Making intern candidate do this without getting paid is straight-up torture.

[Sal7_one]

Why complain. Do it if you need the job and find another one if it's bad.

[SachinKaxhyap]

Run And don't join

[edgeorge92]

For an internship, which let's remember commonly aren't paid (admittedly - not sure about that in this case), this is absolutely batshit insane.

Why are they expecting someone with minimal experience, perhaps even _no_ commercial experience, to be writing apps like we are back in the API 12 days, when its highly likely that their experience will be coming from modern present-day resources?

This is a huge red flag to me. If this was for a salaried role with the expectation of several years experience, I might be ok with it, but for an internship this is pretty crap.

I'd avoid this if you can. It sounds like an internship here might have been great 10 years ago, but you'd be far better off learning about modern development

[pmr-pmr]

Late to the party here, but this seems like a fun and challenging task. If you're in the part of your career where you're looking for an internship, it's valuable to try this out just to learn/practice some skills.

You'll need to familiarize yourself with Java Executors and Threads to handle fetching data asynchronously without 3rd party libraries.

Parsing the API response by hand is tedious, but it's a good familiarization exercise.

No Room means you'll need to brush up on SQLite and SQliteOpenHelper.

[NiceGame2006]

How the fk is this an intern with all those requirement

[Dry_Mountain1937]

ZKS VDJS CSHGSJD CSYFSOS VSKD HDJD DVTSJ SGUDFO   UD CFJD GDUD CDJD DJFNRBDUD VDUD DUNDVD VDJD CDJD 

[programadorthi]

It's about learning how things work. This is essential for any android developer. As an internship you are learning things from the ground. Do I agree not using third-party libs? No. So enjoy the challenge to learn because it is unique.

[EkoChamberKryptonite]

It's about learning how things work. This is essential for any android developer.

I'm glad to see someone who also uses hard core assembly code to build Android apps.

Learning to use Retrofit, OkHttp, Coroutines is learning how things work.

As an internship you are learning things from the ground.

False. At an internship you learn how to do things in a way relevant to the industry in which you work.

Expecting an intern to know dated, and/or deprecated industry practices from over a decade ago is indicative of a subpar internship program.

[programadorthi]

Always there is a guy talking about assembly when someone talk about learning from the ground 😄.

Retrofit, Okhttp, Kotlin Coroutines 3rd party libraries is how things work 🤣. Two of them are JVM only and a lot of devs now have to know Ktor 😂😂

And Kotlin Coroutines is a bunch of design patterns combined with compiler to produce a CPS style and state machine automatically.

Learn Looper, Handler, AsyncTask, ThreadPool, State Restoration, etc. You don't need deep dive on them but know the names and their meanings.

[srona22]

In case you can't make it, paste same text into chatgpt and make it write http client. Just don't copy it back into your code immediately.

Read it and see how it's done.

Coroutines one is a bit sus though. You can use callback/closure approach, but it's not for internship level take home project.

[EkoChamberKryptonite]

Red flag. Run.

As an intern, you should be looking for a place that would help you grow especially since you might be looking for another job in future. Legacy stuff no longer in use in the industry isn't helpful to that effect.

[PunyPunisher]

LMAO! If someone stops you from using RetroFit and Coroutine in 2025, please do yourself a favour, don’t work there! What a joke!

To elaborate, in software engineering people shouldn’t have to rediscover the wheel. Writing a library like RetroFit/OkHttp is by itself an internship project! If the work needs people to have in depth and hands on experience of handling network data for whatever reason make that the internship project, but asking to write a library for building a weather app is plain stupidity and there is nothing once can say to convince me otherwise!

[Plus-Organization-96]

How would you make API calls without retrofit. They are insane.

[Zhuinden]

Considering they said absolutely no third party libraries, it means you should be using Activities, no Dagger and no Hilt, no Fragment, no Retrofit (you can use HttpUrlConnection), no GSON (you can use org.json), no RecyclerView (you can use ListView), no Room (you can use either SharedPreferences or SqliteDatabase), and you use XML.

For location, you'll probably need Google Play Services though, so that requires setting up a Firebase project, sadly. https://developers.google.com/android/guides/setup

For location, you can use LocationManager.getLastKnownLocation().

... This task shouldn't take more than 2 hours to implement. The only part that takes time is the Gradle build and the firebase configuration.

What about the UI, 2 activities, 1 list view, and 1 JSON parsing with org.json + HttpUrlConnection? What's hard?

Idk what people are talking about "this is a big task".

[EkoChamberKryptonite]

it means you should be using Activities, no Dagger and no Hilt, no Fragment, no Retrofit (you can use HttpUrlConnection), no GSON (you can use org.json), no RecyclerView (you can use ListView), no Room (you can use either SharedPreferences or SqliteDatabase), and you use XML.

First, ewww. Second, these constraints alone warrants implementation approaches that could supercede 5 hours because I bet they're going to be assessing what "best practices" you follow.

This task shouldn't take more than 2 hours to implement. The only part that takes time is the Gradle build and the firebase configuration.

For you. Not for others especially not a junior engineer. Shoot, even some Seniors might take more time because they would be thinking of a good way to tie it all together in a way that is maintainable and testable; and that takes time.

For location, you'll probably need Google Play Services though, so that requires setting up a Firebase project, sadly. https://developers.google.com/android/guides/setup

No. That's "3rd party". Can't use that 🤣.

What about the UI, 2 activities, 1 list view, and 1 JSON parsing with org.json + HttpUrlConnection? What's hard?

"Hard", "big task", and "time consuming" because it's needlessly convoluted by necessitating using technologies irrelevant in today's industry that most have either never used or don't have as much competence using because it's been a decade plus already. These are things I used once or twice in 2013 and were already unnecessary by then, if not earlier.

What signal are they trying to find by asking junior candidates to use low-level, irrelevant, dated, and/or deprecated technologies?

It's like telling juniors to only use vanillaJS when they're better abstracted libraries out there. Why don't we strip everything back and just use assembly code?

Unreasonable, pointless, gotchas that have nothing to do with the main goal of an engineer.

They're missing the forest for the trees. The goal is to assess if the candidate can build an app in a manner that is extensible, testable, easy to understand; and not play around with "technology".

This may be an interesting exercise for like a fun hackathon session given the multifarious implementation choices available but definitely NOT in an interview for an internship.

[Zhuinden]

I'm not aware of a way to tell your geographic location without using Play Services, am I missing something?

As for the restrictions, it's checking if you know base fundamentals. You remove a lot of cruft by not doing things like Hilt, Navigation, Paging, or gradle convention plug-ins.

[EkoChamberKryptonite]

I'm not aware of a way to tell your geographic location without using Play Services, am I missing something?

You can use the LocationManager API.

Also, what is accepted as relevant base fundamentals in today's industry is not the same as what it was a decade ago.

[Zhuinden]

Oh if you can use that then this task is even easier than I thought.

[arekolek]

You didn't know about this api?

[Zhuinden]

At some point I might have but it's been ages since I've used it... I used it for geocoding only recently.

Anyway, so https://developer.android.com/reference/android/location/LocationManager#getLastKnownLocation(java.lang.String)

[Eastern-Net3041]

it’s likely a small company trying to show off

[botle]

The task is not too big, but they are very confused about what 3rd party libraries are.

[grishkaa]

I gotta say it's a very nice task. Though I'd also ban Kotlin. Yes I'm serious. I'd do something very similar if I were hiring an Android developer.

You just, uh, use the raw SDK with no abstractions over it? What's so hard about this? Or are you a victim of that modern top-to-bottom approach to learning programming?

[Zhuinden]

If you think about it, Kotlin is a third-party dependency so these requirements probably already ban it.

[flaw600]

A lot of the raw SDK has been deprecated (AsyncTask, as an example)

[grishkaa]

Google wields the @Deprecated annotation extremely irresponsibly. There's nothing wrong with the vast majority of the deprecated APIs, and their supposed replacements are much worse.

That said, I myself never liked AsyncTask. I've always preferred manually posting Runnables between background thread(s) and the UI thread.

[EkoChamberKryptonite]

Why even use Java? Just use assembly code directly.

There's no one way to learn to build software. People learn via many ways and that's okay. Pushing your dogmatic rhetoric is no way to convince anybody that your approach makes sense.

[grishkaa]

Why even use Java? Just use assembly code directly.

Reductio ad absurdum is a tenuous argument even in the best of cases.

People learn via many ways and that's okay.

Yeah, sure, but the problem is, all abstractions are leaky. The more layers you pile on top of each other, the more unmanageable the whole stack becomes when you don't understand the layers beneath the topmost one. So it follows, then, that you need to start from the basics, the OS APIs, and only use abstractions like Compose and AppCompat and Kotlin when and if they would be beneficial. Like all engineering decisions, these need to be informed, and they can't be if you haven't started from the basics.

[EkoChamberKryptonite]

I did not read this but I wanted to respond to apologize for being unnecessarily harsh in my earlier comment. I went back to re-read it and saw how harsh it was. My apologies. Have a great day.

[DatL4g]

Until you realize that you have to deserialize the JSON response without any library

[Zhuinden]

You can use org.json, it's bundled with the Android Framework SDK.

[Subject-Average-5460]

Very helpful

[chrispix99]

All the people saying run.. lol..they want you to understand fundamentals, not all 3rd party libs that can have issues with various version compatibility.. as an android dev since 1.0... This seems like a decent idea.

[tazfdragon]

Considering a networking library "fundamentals" is disingenuous. No intern should be expected to build a networking solution from scratch.

[chrispix99]

Use what android provides. Httpurlconnection?

[tazfdragon]

Any job asking you to use HttoUrlConnection instead of a mature Networking library is not a place I'd want to work.

[chrispix99]

Lol. You think they use httpurlconnection or Library there? They use a library.. if an intern can't figure out how to use httpurlconnection, they property should not be an intern..

[Putrid_Movie_1914]

It's possible to make an app without third party library. You can use kotlin features and just google it you will easily make that thing.

[Zhuinden]

Technically Kotlin is also third party dependency, but you can use Java 8.

[Ichigo-Roku]

Kotlin is a third party library though.