Android and all other writing has been transition over to fregrott.wordpress.com. Please change your bookmarks.
Archive for June, 2011
A firm has begun trademark application review process on the mobilebytes name i the mobile applications field so I am transitioning the blog to;
So change your bookmarks, new android stuff will be posted soon and will still be posting about eclipse, linux, java, startups, etc. Onplanet android the android feed will change to:
http://fredgrott.wordpress.com/category/android/feed/
So if you consume the rss as individual feed put into your rss reader now.
I have been sifting through Chicago Android opportunities and wanted to share this little strange gem. I am keeping the firm name and person’s name undisclosed because it would somewhat be embarrassing to them but to say that this proves that the people who cannot code go into business management somewhat is an understatement.
Basically, we were discussing what the first steps of android developer executes in a new position and I brought up the fact that one obviously creates a utility library full of helper classes and UI widgets. The interviewer stated tha they do not do that as they want some UI widgets created via code and not xml. Now guess what basic java concept the interviewer does not get, and this folks is former java programmer doing the interviewing?
Well, by using method overriding one can have methods that create the UI widget via code and by xml in the same class. Not to mention that you can include such classes in an Android Project Library. Or even this gem of not understanding that the basic rule of not having non-UI stuff on UI threads all leads into why the Android Activity/Application life-cycle is the way it is as far as the difference between the Application context and the activity context.
Its interesting to go on interviews to see if people really get testing or not and its role in the agile process. For example, the set of ant-rules files that is distributed with the android sdk has had annoying little mistakes in key areas such as the coverage target inn test_rules, etc for awhile. My correction to the coverage target is in this Gist.
And those little mistakes are usually encountered by just executing the scripts and going through all the developer user cases…in other words functional testing of the ant scripts. Its the same testing of patience when you participate in interviews and receive the impression that the potential firm is not using testing.
If you are an android bug reporter please vote for the bug, issue 17305. Lets vote on enough of these bugs in the ant rules files included with the sdk that the ant scripts become extremely useful instead of half baked.
MobileBytes 