We enjoy exploring new processes and technologies at Etnetera. In addition, we emphasize sharing know-how among ourselves and externally, which is why we decided with the Android to go on a weekend teambuilding event in October with a clear goal - to focus on Jetpack Compose.
The fact that this is an attractive topic was already evident in the occupation of the rented chalet in Rokytnice. What am I going to tell you, simply the whole team of Android developers participated. The chalet provided us with sufficient facilities, fresh mountain air and, most importantly, sufficient focus on learning.
Catch your own Pokémon
We had all arrived at the chalet on Friday, but this time we focused mainly on strengthening the team, playing some board games and, of course, having a beer. Our colleague Alex prepared the main program for Saturday.
During this program, we went through topics ranging from the basics of Jetpack Compose, to defining styles and loading states, to animations. But in order to not only talk about the theory and try out the practical stuff, everyone in their project developed an app with a catchy Pokémon theme.
Development that saves time
We tried everything out on the app and resolved any uncertainties together. After just a couple of hours it was obvious that Jetpack Compose is a style of development that really saves time. We managed to develop a fully functional app focused on the UI layer.
What the UI layer contained
- list of items with loading status
- loading additional items using "lazy loading"
- item detail with a varied amount of View elements
- animated transition between screens
- animate chart
- light and dark application mode
It was great! The weekend just flew by and we came back to Prague a bit smarter. I personally believe that this style of mobile app UI layer development will completely replace the current one (Android UI). Similarly as it was with Kotlin and Java.