Agile Android-In-Anger

There is a tradition in Java when trying to teach a group to relearn coding patterns or best practices to use the -In-Anger in the title. There are two ways essentially, one is to mock everything so as to be able to use TDD via Junit4 testing in a JVM outside of the Android emulator or android device. The other way is to integrate everything in such a way that one can use roboguice, robotium, and android-mock to instrument test code in the android emulator or android device.

With the introduction of caliper(@googlecode) for benchmarking and vogar(@googlecode) for executing both benchmarking and unit tests via the command line to a Dalvik VM either in the emulator or device that it may once again be speedy and fashionable to do TDD via real unit test code instrumentation.

The title to the article series I have come up with is Agile Android-In-Anger. The anger part is due to the myths that still are out there of what code patterns work in android application development and some performance myths about some of those tools such as dependency injection. The plan is to have some articles up at shareme.github.com this next week.

I do expect to fully cover Roboguice, robotium and Android-Mock together.

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TDD Hardships on Andorid

You would think that implementing Agile-TDD at the build system level for Android Application Development would b the hard part. Not that is not challenging. The hard part seems to get companies and firms to believe that if its implemented right and executed that you have white box QA testing using  this build system framework without the full costs of full blown QA department. Other mobile platforms such as J2ME in which we do not have a full emulator at the OS level and higher which results in  major differences between the J2ME emulator and what appears on the device in several crucial areas. With Android he can be accepted that 95% to 98% of functions/features on the emulator work as advertised exactly the same way on the device because the emulator not only emulates java but the full connection and integration with the device OS and we have device hardware profiles. This means that similar to the iPhone emulator that with the right build/testing system the power is put back in the one developer hands again significantly reducing cots.

I see not only Android OEMs such as Motorola but other firms developing Android applications view my linkedin profile daily. It is not much to throw a small contract my way so that I can finish this Agile-TDD build system development. Am I asking too much for a small Android development gig/contract? I mean due to this use of Agile-TTD rates can be in terms of $50 to $80 per hour due to the time savings in the developmental process. If you are a firm take the last highest cost Android Application development project that was completed. Now, imagine only paying 50% to 75% of that costs.

My next Android Cointribution-Agile-TDD

I am finishing up my next android contribution. Its a bug fix to fix the ANT support in the SDK by adding the proper ANT targets for unit and mock testing. If you have downloaded my Sdk customization extras you wil want to look at this bug fix as it has new targets added that are very useful. I will be posting a copy to this blog between now and Saturday.

List of new ANT  targets:

-tests.all

-tests.emma

-tests.functional

-tests.unit

-tests.log

-tests.all.breakpoint

-tests.small

-tests.medium

-tests.large

-tests.performance

The post at this blog will contain a link to a code sample showing code for all the tests as an example so everyone can use it as a guide . Still attempting to get sponsored support for covering these Android Agile method subjects so that I can publish some chapters, if you know of a firm that would sponsor this let me know.

Agile Android Programming

With Google IO 2009 and the introduction of HTML5 and the focus on web programming on andorid everyone was of the opinion that Android Java was on the way out as an application programming language. Now, what if I were to tell ou that there are some Agile methods ot make Android Java as fast in development as web code?

In other words Android Application development using Java is not dead yet. But how? You use a light dependency stack such as Guice and an ORM library and Metawidget UI library.  We can get the same development speed as with web code development.  Oh oh Google what you unleased, a platform where web code nd java coode are equals on a mobile platform? Nice!

Yes, there somewhat is an ebook coming, hopefully. This is something OEMs like Motorola do ntot know about because I have kept quite about it going thorugh componnents that did not work until I found the right DI, ORM, and UI framework combinations.