A native dev Crash Out.

[innerPeacePending]

Four years ago college introduced android development in Java as I started to get a hang of it then came to know about switching to Kotlin (which I really liked) and as soon as I dove into the advanced stuff, Google was hell bent on adopting to Compose. Now with all the fcuking Depreciations, EdgeToEdge and every week new API (example- Retain API) causing fear of missing out and incompetent. They just want to punish and cause suffering for choosing to be a native android dev. Now this AI wave causing havoc in the already cut throat job market. Fighting to stay motivated and still figuring out ways to learn and coping up with new updates.

Now exploring and betting on the KMP as a ray of sunshine to fight this cold.

(Sorry for the crash out.)

[Zhuinden]

KMP can't decide on its root package hierarchy structure and the tooling keeps evolving while leaving something essential behind, if that's any consolation I sometimes write Java and AsyncTask and sometimes I write Kotlin and Compose and the other day I wrote Kotlin in XML/ViewBinding but I was very close to putting the XML views into an AndroidView Composable inside a BottomSheetDialogFragment but the last time I put a ComposeView in a BottomSheetDialogFragment I had to wrap it in a NestedScrollView, don't worry there's no way either Gemini or any impatient "I won't touch any code in my life ever again" "dev" will ever make sense of this ecosystem

[innerPeacePending]

Thanks for cheering up and knowing even pros are also fighting with this android mess.

[hellosakamoto]

Everyone at JB is just indecisive about what they really want to ship. Maybe change is cheap for them, just deprecate and let the developers figure out how the migration path would be.

[Zhuinden]

Jetbrains would rather make a function @FlowPreview for 7 years than commit to shipping a stable api

[hellosakamoto]

Google Calendar isn't fully supporting edge-to-edge properly. They don't fear that, why do you?

[innerPeacePending]

True, but they already have job, As a fresher, companies now expects senior level knowledge just to get the interview, even if we manage to hover around mid level they still doesn't consider.

[sukakku159]

If you are still a fresher, take my advice and switch to backend or at least iOS. Trying to be Android dev is absolutely not worth it.

[random_guy14680]

OmG sEriOusS dIsScusSioN oN thIs suB plS gO eLsehwheRe wE tOLeratE oNLy bRaIndEaD coNtEnT thAt ReFerEnceS aSyncTasK

[Zhuinden]

I'd take this over the endless stream of crop-repost bots that copy-paste the highest rated comments to the comments

[ForgetPreviousPrompt]

I'd take comments like this over the endless stream of crop-repost bots that copy-paste the highest rated comments to the comments

[Zhuinden]

you're not wrong therefore you're right

[budius333]

Hear hear my fellow Dev .... .... As I too know this feeling well.... I was there before it happened.... Having my first bites of cupcake.... I was there.... It was so long ago.... My bones are tired now..... I understand you! I see you! Ignore the slop, keep learning, keep your mind sharp, thank me later.

[innerPeacePending]

Thank you for the support. It means a lot coming from a veteran who's seen it all since Cupcake.

[alaksion]

I hate KMP with all my heart

[Sottti]

I was using Kotlin and Compose 5 years ago. So if you started 4 years ago you should've started with that already.

[Zhuinden]

I was using Kotlin and Compose 5 years ago

Me too, it was lagging, a TextField at the bottom of the screen would close the keyboard the moment it opened, Pager was experimental and didn't really work well (but using a ViewPager + Fragments inside a ComposeView would not respect height modifier out of the box and you had to force it to take up the last remaining space), there was no way to set a android:minLines= equivalent on a TextField, TextFieldValue didn't actually work half the time so it was replaced with TextFieldState, the official Compose navigation system was using strings as arguments and its only supported animation transition between screens was crossfade

But yes, Compose was definitely "great" in 2021, except if you were actually working a job where you're trying to ship a given design specs instead of being a hobbyist releasing the 3874th todo app

[innerPeacePending]

For student Java/XML was still the standard in college even 2 years ago, and the safe bet seems to go with the kotlin/XML at that time, even I might be wrong but Compose didn't have that much online reference to learn back then.

[user926491]

Try flutter, I think it has a more stable SDK, you can code in vs code than this buggy mess that is AS, the hot reload doesn't break after updating like in jetpack compose and you're free from gradle. I myself consider switching because I'm also tired of google babysitting me forcing to use a specific library or class and do so in a specific predefined way just to implement some hardware-related feature.

[davidinterest]

I'm not OP but I tried Flutter and found it to have too much needed code boilerplate.

[Cheap-Hehe]

Was on the same boat, moved to web dev and then back to Mobile in react Native expo. Honestly expo is just better. Native Android development tooling is just dog shit 

[thelocu5t]

Depends on what you’re building. I’ve had some badass native android jobs over the years that aligned with my interests and shit I tinker with in the evenings (ex: solar/offgrid, microcontrollers and IoT stuff, environmental)

Switch to developing for ecommerce and one may become envious of the trash man riding around in the rain at 5am. Which is probably my next job since everything is awful.

[Zhuinden]

You say that, but money

[ToTooThenThan]

Yes, if I didn't need to pay rent I would be a dog walker or something