Recent content on Jeroen Mols
To conclude my series on full-stack development, this part will look at the implementation, design choices, what worked well and what didn’t. This builds on the to-do list project proposed in part 1 and the tech stack described in part 2.
One of my main drivers for this side project was to make all technology choices myself. To do that effectively, I would have to consider the pros and cons of different options and frankly learn many new things.
After pivoting my career to full-stack development, I missed the “depth” I used to have on mobile. So to build out more foundational full-stack knowledge, I decided to build a few side projects.
After 7 years, it was time to migrate my old Jekyll website to a new more modern platform. Read on to learn why, how, and what the main challenges were in this process.
Are you using a VPN on your mobile device? Do you need to disable that to access your development web server over MDNS on your mobile device?
As developers, we love to build cool things and ship them as fast as reasonably possible. And to get that done, here are a few things you can do to “game the system”.
Tired of building un-versionable, lifeless architecture diagrams? Wouldn’t it be great if you could add your diagram to Git, embed it in your documentation, and have clickable elements?
Planning an event can be stressful, and the last thing you need is worrying about your guests’ privacy. But don’t worry, I’ve got you covered with a privacy-friendly RSVP option.
Looking to configure multiple SSH keys on the same computer? For instance to use a different SSH key for your public and enterprise Github contributions.
These past years I’ve grown to be more privacy-aware. And while this post isn’t about how I’m increasing my personal privacy, I’d like to talk about how I’m increasing yours.
How can you connect your app on an Android emulator to a development server running on the localhost of your computer? The problem # Since Android emulators create their own virtual network, they cannot access devices on your local network.
Trying to get a large number of files from your Android phone, but Android File Transfer freezing up? Here’s what I learned trying to pull ~170 Gb from my Pixel phone.
Looking to get a fancy verified checkmark on Mastodon for your Github account? This post details how I made this work. Steps # Before I get started, huge thanks to Simon Wilson for inspiring me with the original idea.
Traveling by train or plane and want to test your react app on your mobile phone? This quick post explains how to access your react development server from your phone without a Wi-Fi connection.
WorkManager is great to schedule background work on Android. However, since scheduled work lives outside of the app lifecycle, you might run into unexpected crashes.
In the past years, my thoughts on pull request reviews have evolved considerably. Given that creating and reviewing pull requests are a core part of our work, let’s talk about those.
With JCenter shutting down, many are migrating to Maven Central. And while there are many posts on how to publish new artifacts, also all existing artifacts should be migrated away from JCenter.
While Android supports most Java language features, it doesn’t support every API that Java provides. On the other hand, Kotlin multiplatform only allows sharing code across all targets (commonMain), not a subset of targets (commonJvm).
This week JFrog - out of nowhere - announced to completely remove their Maven repository. Since they’ll pull it offline already by May 2021 (!!!) it’s time to urgently migrate away.
Well… I don’t really know where to start this time. 2020 was quite the rollercoaster, with many downs… but fortunately also a few amazing ups. Let’s focus on the good stuff.
Short, powerful post on how to test the release version of libraries directly within a project without having to deploy them to Maven first. As a bonus, there will also be an open-source example showcasing all of this in action.
Ever had a build failure while integrating an SDK? Wonder how you can avoid your SDK customers having dependency conflicts? How many transitive dependencies should your SDK have?
With modularization being all the hype, should you also modularize an SDK? Are fat aar files really needed? And how do you prevent internal APIs from being exposed on your public interface?
Having switched to Android SDK development over the past year, I’ve run into quite a few interesting and unexpected challenges. So how does library development differ from app development?
A great way to make your library easier to use it to generate code documentation for its public interface. The default way to do this in Kotlin is to generate KDoc using the official Dokka plugin.
Getting up without being rushed, cycling my kids to school, cooking healthy salads for lunch, kids running into my arms when they get home… I’m quite happy with my new daily routine!
Now that we know how feature flags can help us release faster, it’s time to dive into the actual implementation details. How can we easily define feature flags?
Empowered with what feature flags are and why they are useful, let’s see how we can actually integrate them into an app. And how can we roll them out to our users?
A key ingredient to speed up modern software development is feature flags. But what is a feature flag precisely? Why should you care about them? How do you integrate them into your codebase?
Three years ago, we decided ramp up internal app development at Philips Hue. After interviewing candidates (78!) for six months, I became the lead Android developer of the freshly hired Android team.
From Android Q onwards devices can now operate in a fully gestural system navigation mode. In that mode, there is no longer an on-screen back button, instead users can swipe from both edges to navigate back.
Your icon is one of the most important assets in your app. With a bit of luck, users might even put it on their main launcher screen!
Wrapping up this series on modularization I’d like to share some of the things we’ve learned at Philips Hue while going through this process the past year.
Now that we have a clear idea of how a modularized app could look like how can this be applied to an existing app? Part four will dive deeper into how existing apps can be sliced and how you can gradually migrate to a fully modularized architecture.
With a clear view on how multi-module apps should be architected, let’s dive into a real-life practical example. We’ll discover how the architecture results in a clear application structure, how navigation is handled, how to use staged rollouts, how to test everything and even look at a production app that is using this architecture.
Now that we’ve established that modularization is a really good thing to strive for, how should a modularized app look like? How are the different modules connected?
Modularizing your app seems to be all the hype these days. But why should you actually care? What are the benefits for you and your team?
Are you living the dream? Is your code so clean it makes your eyes just tear a little? Can’t think of anything you would still like to refactor?
Architecture components are one of the most exciting things that happened to Android in the past years. But how do you effectively go about and testing this?
Sitting in our own couch, in our own house, kids safely asleep upstairs,… The road here was brutal, but the result is extraordinary. The past year was (hopefully) the busiest year of my entire life.
Learning from analyzing code is one of the greatest ways to improve your skills. Can you spot the mistakes in the tests below? This post brings a fun little quiz for both testing gurus as novices, with a deep dive into the how and why of awesome tests.
Java interop is one of the best features of the Kotlin language, yet sometimes this also can cause unforeseen issues… Puzzle # Disclaimer, the example below is a consequence of legacy code and only serves to demonstrate a Kotlin puzzler.
Was really great visiting Kotlinconf this year and I wanted to do a quick post to link to all of it’s wonderful content. Conference slides # While you will be able to find all recordings here, I often find it useful to be able to quickly scan through the slides.
Kotlin is an incredibly enjoyable, concise and powerful programming language. Yet sometimes also a bit confusing… Puzzle # Have a look at the simple class below.
This is a post-mortem where the very dangerous permission, READ_PHONE_STATE, unintentionally sneaked into our app. Here’s how this could happen, how we debugged and finally how we solved it.
Not only can anything in Android Studio be controlled with a keyboard shortcut, it offers many more simple tricks to make you more productive. To conclude this series, we will look at how you can control the interface, invoke every (!
Refactoring can be tedious and easily introduce bugs. The main reason for this is the number of manual steps involved: rename, move, copy-paste,… So wouldn’t it make sense to automate this and have Android Studio do all the work for you?
Struggling to navigate your code? Getting lost in deep inheritance hierarchies? Hard time figuring out relations between classes? Let’s learn how to navigate code in Android Studio like a pro.
For the first time ever I have my year in review ready in time. I’m sure I’ll never forget 2017. Not only did we start building our dream house, but more importantly, our family grew to 4 people!
Tonight after a routine MacOS update (10.13.2) disaster struck and my Mac got stuck in an update boot loop. After a few hours of panic, reading online and trial & error I managed to resolve it.