205 episodes

Android Backstage, a podcast by and for Android developers. Hosted by developers from the Android engineering team, this show covers topics of interest to Android programmers, with in-depth discussions and interviews with engineers on the Android team at Google.

Subscribe to Android Developers YouTube → https://goo.gle/AndroidDevs

Android Developers Backstage Android Developers

    • Technology
    • 4.7 • 21 Ratings

Android Backstage, a podcast by and for Android developers. Hosted by developers from the Android engineering team, this show covers topics of interest to Android programmers, with in-depth discussions and interviews with engineers on the Android team at Google.

Subscribe to Android Developers YouTube → https://goo.gle/AndroidDevs

    Time for Playtime

    Time for Playtime

    In this episode, Tor, Romain, and Chet talk with Aurash Mahbod from the Play Games team at Google -- covering trends in mobile games, challenges for Android games developers, console games, and more!
     
    Chapters:
    Intro (00:00)
    What’s Aurash working on currently? (02:40)
    How much is Play store providing users with content based on previous interests? (05:29)
    Longstanding games vs new games (08:34)
    Mobile gaming vs console (10:07)
    Are there stats on what type of games people are playing? (18:07)
    Difficulties and solutions for transitioning games from various devices (21:14)
    Movie corner - War Games (25:15)
    How does Play console help devs optimize engagement? (26:23)
    What is the breakdown of tools that devs actually use for games? (27:53)
    Reducing the backend costs for devs (30:18)
    Where does loyalty content surface? (34:28)
    Balancing add load (35:16)
    Cloud saves (38:18)
    Aurash’s history with Play store (42:18)
    Wrap up (42:58)
    Romain: @romainguy, threads.net/@romainguy, romainguy@androiddev.social
    Tor: threads.net/@tor.norbye and tornorbye@androiddev.social
    Chet: @chethaase, threads.net/@chet.haase, and chethaase@androiddev.social
    Aurash: https://twitter.com/aurash - @aurash

    Catch videos on YouTube → https://goo.gle/adb-podcast 

    • 46 min
    Fan’otations

    Fan’otations

    In this episode, Tor, Romain, and Chet talk about one of Tor’s favorite topics: Lint! Specifically, we talk about Lint checks and the annotations that use them to enable better, more robust, and more self-documenting APIs.
    Lint: It’s not just for pockets anymore.
    Chapters:
    Intro (00:00)
    Lint checks for annotations (01:50)
    Lint checks in Android (05:38)
    Logic checks (07:34)
    Color representations (10:01)
    How does lint know the type of integer? (14:40)
    Kotlin annotations (17:19)
    Unsigned (20:10)
    HalfFloat (22:25)
    Thread annotations (25:12)
    @CallSuper (28:18)
    LayoutOpt (30:26)
    Lint checks in AndroidX (32:00)
    Restrict to annotation (36:45)
    Writing your own custom Lint checks (39:51)
    Lint testing framework (43:26)
    Kotlin buildList Lint check example (45:25)
    @Discouraged (48:15)
    Wrap up (50:08)
    @Deprecated Chet (50:50)
     
    Romain: @romainguy, threads.net/@romainguy, romainguy@androiddev.social
    Tor: threads.net/@tor.norbye and tornorbye@androiddev.social
    Chet: @chethaase, threads.net/@chet.haase, and chethaase@androiddev.social
     
    Catch videos on YouTube → https://goo.gle/adb-podcast  
    Subscribe to Android Developers  → https://goo.gle/AndroidDevs 

    • 52 min
    (W)rap

    (W)rap

    In this episode, Tor, Romain, and Chet talk about some of the many things that happened this year in the world of Android development, including new devices and form factors, tool improvements, AndroidX features and libraries, and Jetpack Compose releases. And any tech podcast would be remiss without mentioning AI/ML, so we talk about that too.

    Tor, Romain and Chet
    Chapters:
    Intro (00:00)
    Google engineers vs Android (00:57)
    Big changes of 2023 intro (3:03)
    AI (3:38)
    Programming with AI (5:08)
    Writing with AI (8:52)
    New devices from Android - Pixel fold (12:31)
    Pixel watch (18:50)
    Bard (19:37)
    Changes in device release times (20:23)
    Major changes in devices vs incremental updates (21:42)
    Camera (22:40)
    Platform developments - mainline modules (24:03)
    More testing for Android (25:12)
    Flaky tests (26:55)
    Jetpack compose features (32:32)
    RTO (38:00)
    Shapes library and KMP (42:42)
    Final thoughts on big events of 2023 (45:03)
    Studio build improvements (46:43)
    Baseline profiles (49:21)
    Listener mail (50:45)
    Where has Chet been? (52:46)
    Metalava question (55:46)
    Wrap up wrap up (57:00)
     
    Romain: @romainguy, threads.net/@romainguy, romainguy@androiddev.social
    Tor: threads.net/@tor.norbye and tornorbye@androiddev.social
    Chet: @chethaase, threads.net/@chet.haase, and chethaase@androiddev.social
     
    Catch videos on YouTube → https://goo.gle/adb-podcast  
    Subscribe to Android Developers  → https://goo.gle/AndroidDevs

    • 58 min
    AndroidX, Gradle and Metalava

    AndroidX, Gradle and Metalava

    In this episode, Tor and Romain chat with Aurimas Liutikas from the AndroidX team. Topics include performance tuning the AndroidX Gradle builds using configuration caching, local caching and remote caching, as well as tracking API compatibility using the Metalava tool.

    Aurimas, Romain and Tor
     
    Romain: @romainguy, threads.net/@romainguy, romainguy@androiddev.social
    Tor: threads.net/@tor.norbye and tornorbye@androiddev.social
    Aurimas: androiddev.social/@Aurimas and www.liutikas.net/blog-posts
     
    Catch videos on YouTube → https://goo.gle/adb-podcast   
    Subscribe to Android Developers  → https://goo.gle/AndroidDevs  

    • 53 min
    Firebase in Android Studio

    Firebase in Android Studio

    In this episode, Tor and Romain chat with Greg Baker and Joe Baker-Malone about exciting new Android Studio features made possible by Firebase integration. Physical device streaming allows you to connect remotely to physical devices hosted in Google’s secure data centers and use them for all your development needs. We also explore other time saving features like the ability to go from a crash report directly to the correct line of code, even across git branches.
     

    Tor, Romain, Joe, Greg
     
    Links:
    Android Device Streaming from Android Studio feedback form
    App Quality Insights and Firebase Crashlytics



    Romain: @romainguy, romainguy@threads, romainguy@androiddev.social
    Tor: tor.norbye@threads and tornorbye@androiddev.social
    Greg: @bakergo@fosstodon.org
     

    • 44 min
    WebGPU

    WebGPU

    In this episode, Chet and Romain speak with Ken Russell and Corentin Wallez from the WebGPU team. WebGPU is a new API that brings modern GPU rendering and compute functionality to web and other platforms (including Android!). We talk about the genesis and capabilities of WebGPU, WGSL (WebGPU’s new shading language), the state of WebGL (the predecessor API for web GPU rendering), and lots of other fun related graphics topics.

    Ken, Romain, and Chet (not pictured: Corentin, who is on the monitor behind the photographer)

    Links:
    Samples (and its github repo)  
    Google I/O Codelab
    Google I/O presentation Introducing WebGPU (and associated blog post)
    Series of articles teaching WebGPU and WGSL
    Series of articles of WebGPU Best Practices
    Draft specs for WebGPU and WGSL
    Dawn from Google/Chromium
    wgpu from Firefox
     
    Romain: @romainguy, romainguy@threads, romainguy@androiddev.social
    Tor: tor.norbye@threads and tornorbye@androiddev.social
    Chet: @chethaase, chet.haase@threads, and chethaase@androiddev.social
    Ken: @gfxprogrammer
    Corentin: @DaKangz and @DaKangz@mastodon.gamedev.place
    Catch more from ADB → https://goo.gle/adb-podcast
    Subscribe to Android Developers YouTube → https://goo.gle/AndroidDevs 

    • 50 min

Customer Reviews

4.7 out of 5
21 Ratings

21 Ratings

rzawu36 24 ,

Awesome

A rare place where you can find first hand info. It's also a very well produced podcast. I recommend all of the Kotlin ones

mgalgs ,

Great stuff

Usually very informative and fun. There have been a few guests with the infamous Google Snoot, but Chet and Tor are able to keep things down-to-earth and smart at the same time.

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