Brand New Kotlin Multiplatform Podcast: ATOM

Brand New Kotlin Multiplatform Podcast: ATOM

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welcome to a touch of multi-platform a  new podcast from JetBrains and Touchlab   about the multi-platform technology evolution  and its grow and the community that's growing so my name is Kate i'm product marketing  manager for Kotlin and my name is Justin i'm   the director of project strategy at Touchlab  in atom a touch of multi-platform we invite   multi-platform experts to discuss where all  aspects of Kotlin multiplatform technology   from its evolution and how it affects developers  to a variety of use cases with available insights   about how to maximize the benefits of  using Kotlin multiplatform in your project   we've got a great episode for you today we've  got Dimitri savinoff the Kotlin multi-platform   lead at JetBrains and Kevin galligan the  technology partner at touch lab to talk   about kala multiplatform mobile and the road to  beta and how it's come so far since january 2020.   great i'm excited but uh before inviting  our guests Justin uh i i think we need a   short warm-up you know to to have a good dynamic  during our interview but please let's not discuss   the weather it's quite cold and depressive  here oh it's bad over here in connecticut too   although i like the snow i don't like the code  the cold um but every morning um besides bringing   my son to school i look through some news about  calling multiplatform um not just about Kotlin   multiplatform because i care about everything  that's happening in the multi-platform world   and recently i saw um a blog post about a a team  that was moving from react native to flutter   and react native and flutter are both great  technologies but on ios the support is not so good   they keep running into animation jank issues which  has been a problem for quite a long time the nice   thing about multi-platform of course it leaves  the ui choice up to the developers you can start   with native ui and i think we're going to talk  a little bit about multi-platform compose later   which might change things but the nice  thing is it's still going to be optional   you're going to be able to use the best  choice of technology for your use case great   i always when i when i need to use just  one more to discuss all the benefits of   Kotlin multiplatform it's flexibility for  me i think it describes in general that   you're able to use the technology  the amount code of your want to share   uh depends on your own and on the requirements of  your project you know my favorite kind of articles   is articles about how a specific team is using  code and multi-platform for their needs and the one i i read last week and i enjoy it a lot  uh is about uh the story of super awesome which   is a part of epic games right now and uh i  want to read the quote uh from this article   and it's a reason uh why why  i enjoyed this article so much   so um i began as android engineer and now  i'm an ios engineer too when i joined super   awesome i had limited ios experience i started  out working on the kmm and android modules   given i was effectively beating building uh  the majority of a feature across both platforms   i quickly it quickly made sense to develop my ios  programming so i could build the complete feature   for both the fact that 45 of our code is shared  afforded me the time to do this so i like with   hidden feature of uh of Kotlin multi platform  that uh like it pushes you to become you know   the full stack mobile engineer and i believe uh  this role uh will be more and more important uh in   the future that's a great story do you have a case  study for super awesome on the jet brains website   not yet but it's in our backlog okay so you've  already reached out it's gonna happen that's great   to hear um right today we have um our guests let's  start talking to them now um hi Dima hi Kevin hey   hi there's no doubt it was quite an  intense two years for Kotlin multi-platform   let's start with the most noticeable event for  mobile developers the Kotlin team focused on   mobile code sharing and announced that  Kotlin multi-platform mobile went alpha   could you tell us please the reason for such  a decision and what changes did it bring   yeah that is actually a quite an interesting  story in my opinion so uh usually in jailbrainz   in general in Kotlin team specifically all things  were built uh basically with you know with a lot   of passion with a lot of inspiration and this  surprise for multi-platform as well so that was   kind of a cool technology we can build as a team  we saw that yeah well that would be awesome if   people could share the code and choose what they  share what they don't want to share and that would   help people out there so that is what we usually  strive for but that was not planned for anything   so we were just building the compiler which can  compile code into you know multiple targets in   javascript and native and at the at that moment  when the multi-platform just started we were not   thinking about the use cases or the product  we were just building the good technology   and then eventually we started to notice  that uh this technology finds it users and fi   and some people are excited about what mobile code  sharing people excited about other cases as well   like for example the web use case but for mobile  it was the most you know uh outstanding case out   there like people were really excited they were  asking us when it will be done like what we are   doing for that case and at that point we have  realized that we should kind of reposition our   mindset about this and start thinking about just  technology because just compiled doesn't solve   the problem for you you need that to change  you need the id you need the dependencies   and that's how the Kotlin mobile multi-platform  has been born as a product and that signifies the   pretty big change in the mindset how we treat the  multiplatform here because now we care about the   full product they use the experience from the  beginning to the end so and yeah exactly that   here was really a big year it might not  seem from the you know perspective of that   not that big from the perspective of features  or something but still it was a big change an   attitude Kevin how did you feel about seeing  that in the in the in the store that first app   um well it's it's interesting we'll go too long on  it but uh i got pretty excited when i finally saw   an ios sample in the Kotlin native repo we  were keeping an eye on it but um you know at   the time i wasn't sure really if it was ever  going to it sounds crazy now but at the time   i wasn't sure that there was going to be an ios  implementation of Kotlin native all the samples   were like linux or desktop so and even if it did  the first one still we had to keep in mind was   wasn't like if i recall correctly it wasn't like  shared code it was like you're going to write your   whole thing in ios and get one executable out  but it was like two weeks after Kotlin comp we   were at joycon san francisco and i was determined  to get our app using Kotlin native and uh it was   once the JetBrains app came out it was  like well you're not first you're last so   we didn't do that but it was uh  it was pretty neat it was it was   pretty interesting to look at to  think how far it's come in that   span of time if you because i remember looking  at the source code for that app and it was like   this is interesting it's going to have to approve  but it was amazing it was amazing to see it work   speaking about this focusing on Kotlin  multiplatform mobile i saw some confusion in the   community uh when we just gave this announcement  of Kotlin multi-platform mobile went alpha   and questions were like uh what's the differences  between Kotlin multi-platform mobile and Kotlin   monte platform do i need to migrate my projects  so let's maybe give a short explanation of these   differences or there are no differences at all  so what is it called and multiple from mobile   uh yeah so i hope i gave some context on to  clarify this kind of a confusion so the Kotlin   as i have said before the Kotlin mouse platform  is a technology so on its own it's it can be   used to solve your problems but it's not  exactly the solution for your problems and   it can have a lot of applications so we can  actually see that multi-platform as a technology   can be helpful not only for mobile code sharing  but for other cases like for as i mentioned the   web development uh back-end plus front-end uh you  you call it but the the code bio mobile monitor   platform is exactly the case we are focused  the most currently which doesn't mean that   other cases do not exist we actually try our best  to not block other cases and weigh down the good   foundation in the team so whenever we try to  design a new feature it usually code by Kotlin   mobile case because that's where most of our users  are currently but we always try to think quick   would this feature be useful for other cases  maybe i can generalize this construction in   a blue script and make it helpful not only for  i don't know ios artifacts but but also for js   bundles or like back-end charts or something  like that so we always try to think about this   because yeah while this case is important for  us the multiplayer from the whole technology is   also what we care a lot about so it's interesting  i kind of want to address a couple things   and it's the the Kotlin multi-platform  mobile um focus the uh the technology started   as as interesting tech and then and then  became it became the focus on mobile seeing   the community response we kind of came from the  other side completely so a couple years before   um Kotlin multi-platform we were focused on this  thing called j2 objc which you know uh it's an   interesting piece of tech that technically works  i like the water use interesting piece of tech   i mean very worse but uh you know we spent  a lot of time because i personally and and   to to some degree the org because when i get  obsessed with something the org to some degree   gets obsessed with it uh we you know android and  ios under the hood are if you took off the change   the names of the sdk calls and stuff like they're  almost entirely the same they both have threading   and sql light and they both do network calls  and they both have local files that you can name   go down the list they're they're essentially the  same thing um and the reason that you don't really   share code is i would argue purely because  of the the the impediments to doing so like   the technologies around it uh tend not to be the  focus of the you know google is not really focused   on that per se certainly apple is not helping you  trying to get your android code to work very much   let's say but uh it just made sense if you could  solve the the resistance between doing it the   tooling and all that kind of stuff eventually it's  just it totally makes sense to do it and we over   time found the things that were wrong about the  approach we were taking j2 objc just happened to   all of those major problems around long list  but when Kotlin multi-platform came out to   me it was like okay here we go this is another  approach that hopefully this time like this big   company will figure out these these resistance  issues and and we kind of went all in and to me   Kotlin multi-platform mobile as a focus sends a  message that you understand that that's like the   killer app quote unquote like that's where you're  really going to find a lot of traction and to the   community and myself there's that hanging question  of like are they going to continue doing it or   are they going to continue supporting this are  they really going to do it and like seeing it go   through these progressive stages of um stability  and formality and that jet brains is definitely   like all in they're going to make this work um  it certainly took us to like okay we forgot like   maybe the tooling isn't there now certainly in  2018 it wasn't but it's going to be like they're   going to figure it out so it's been interesting to  watch from that but yeah we were early on crossing   our fingers like please you know please please  make sure you take it seriously because like   somebody has to solve this problem you can totally  do it i checked that the first commit to camp kit   i think one of the most popular projects aimed  to help developers to get started with Kotlin   multi-platform mobile so the first commit was  made in december 2019. tell us a little bit   more about its creation and how has it changed  during this period including the changes uh uh   related to focusing on mobile uh multiplatform  mobile okay so around that time um back when   people used to do in-person events which hopefully  happens against them we i mean we in new york we   run the big android meetup we you know we ran  android conferences like we were super involved   in the community and i started spending a fair bit  of time going out and talking about the technology   and trying to get people interested in trying it  out and whatever and the common thing i would get   one person specifically uh said you know we had  a hack week and i tried to add some code to our   production ios app and it took like it just took  a long time to get started and i asked well what   happened like well i found there's if you go  on the website it talks about gradle and then i   googled the blog post and i tried doing that but  then i saw the blog post that he googled it was   like hopelessly out of date and not going to work  so it was really hard to get started if you just   wanted to see something work so we were like all  right camp kit is going to be you clone this you   open it up in this tool you can run it and then  you can progressively get the information about   how to do things so we try to remain  relatively unopinionated around architecture um   a lot of the time it was trying to explain the  concurrency model which we could talk more or   less about later and um it was basically just you  could you'd have five or ten minutes to get from   i saw this repo to i have something running and  that was really the goal and then from there you   could you could expand out and implement something  in your code like at the time kmm or or Kotlin   multi-platform mobile um wasn't like the public  specialty and so camp kit was trying to make that   um that something that was easy to do and we  put a surprising amount of effort into making   a very very lean sample app i never would have  guessed how much that would take because if we   were taking feedback we had we were actually  removing stuff removing stuff we're moving   so um we had that launch and it was very  popular and then after that um the k the   mobile the multi-platform mobile specific website  and documentation and the focus from JetBrains   uh came about and then i would also argue there's  several other uh really interesting sample apps   out in the community so um i would say our a lot  of camp kit is like a little time capsule stuck   in early 2020 and it hasn't changed a lot so  we're in the process of switching camp kit from   this is how you get started to we're going to get  opinionated and change it into well this is how we   build stuff or how we architect things at Touchlab  to be sort of the i won't say bleeding edge of a   multi-platform mobile but certainly i would  say uh solves a lot of the issues that people   run into in the first go-around like you know  going from shared code to android is relatively   straightforward it's all Kotlin going from share  code to ios has a whole bunch of discussions   and decisions you have to make and so that's what  we're doing we're in the process of doing that now   so if you were just starting  to develop chem kits right now   uh it would it would look like more the set of  of golden rules of how to architect your app yes   well yeah i mean so this this is uh dovetailing  nicely with internal efforts and some of our   services side which you know i won't get turn this  into a commercial but um sorry but yeah we are   focusing on um doing a better job of documenting  and publishing our best practices as a team also   our team's been growing significantly so we're  trying to keep everyone on the same page and um   because it's relatively new tech we found a  lot of people in the community are like well   what how do you do this and so it's it's okay to  get opinionated to tell them how we've decided   to do this because we've been doing it for a few  years so it is pretty much that it is the public   expression of how we've the internal decisions  we've made around architecture um it makes it   somewhat tricky because not we open source a lot  of stuff but not everything is open sourced and   it's not necessarily because we charge for it  it's because we don't want to support it yet   um it's one of those things that the open source  people don't tell you is that it costs just as   much to support it too so you got to be careful  um and there's we're in the phase now of a of   new technology tends to have a handful of people  doing a lot of things okay and it's turning into   a larger group of people doing one particular  thing really well so there's consolidation around   libraries and stuff and we're trying to we're  sort of navigating that and making library choices   all as the technology is improving it can't  get just like that the most public expression   of where we're at internally and hopefully  we maintain but we will maintain that over   time it won't be another two years from now time  capsule looking back but that's what we're doing   great uh it was a super useful project before we  we got all this documentation and other samples   and tooling uh now simplifies our job and i  believe with all these changes you describe it   will be again super useful project so just thanks  again from the team and from the community for it   yeah that's a pretty cool story i can share like  one interesting point if we have time for that if   that is okay because it really resonated with my  previous point about like the change of mindset   regarding like moving from technology to a product  so you know again a bit of a context of how the   Kotlin team functions or used to function at the  very least so uh the dog footing was always the   extremely big factor for us in building the uh  language and the tooling we're building that   tools which we all use so we try to make them  enjoyable for ourselves the same with when which   the same with scotland started as the language  for jet brains to write their products and yeah it   turned out to be pretty successful so far and yeah  so with the multi platform we actually encountered   a new problem that we are not the mobile  developers so we certainly can get some kind   of expertise maybe we can hire someone with their  mobile expertise but in the end we are not people   who using this on a daily basis to write our own  applications this was a very interesting new you   know experience for the Kotlin team and we are  incredibly grateful for the community who really   helps us to get things right because previously we  could hope that we can try to find good solutions   for problems but now when it comes to mobile  where we are not the experts well we just cannot   even hope for that so thanks a lot to like that  to touch up to everyone who contributes to this   because to everyone who for example answers our  surveys about multi-platform ecosystem because it   really helps us a lot we would not be able to  do this without you thank you yeah technology   is fun um when you start thinking about it as  a product it starts to become more effort and   just like with open source like it's fun to  do um it's nice to get your stuff out there   as Kevin says it costs money to actually  maintain it and do a good job with it um   another thing but the benefit is you do get that  feedback you get to see how people are using it um   one of the downsides um is that people see all  your stuff out in the open but that's good for   the for the for the developers who are watching  what's going on they might see some surprises   um Kotlin is open source jetpack compose is  also open source and a while back um some people   noticed commits for composed desktop and they were  like what's going on over there um and then lo and   behold we got desktop we got compose on the web  compose is now a multi-platform um technology   uh Kevin and Dima what are your thoughts on  multi-platform compose so it is an interesting   thing like i i'm pretty careful to to say uh  in my talks that uh it you know shared code or   shared logic you know using Kotlin multi-platform  we're generally not focused on ui but i don't   mean that to say that you should that that's never  going to be a thing or something we'll never do   um it's just that uh it's not like a lot of the  other tools to simplify the job of making this   cross-platform thing i would argue tend  to only operate in their own universe   so it is significantly more difficult  to include some react native inside of   a native native app and it's difficult to include  flutter inside of an otherwise native app i mean   i'm sure flutter fans might just disagree  with that but um it's true right relatively so   Kotlin's designed uh a lot of time i would argue a  lot of the the difficulty and the time take to to   implement it is dealing with the fact that  it interrupts well with the existing platform   and that's a much harder problem to solve so i  obviously am not privy to any secret information   but i do expect that you know doing some  screens and compose and ios will eventually be   an option and at that point you know i had this  discussion over the weekend on twitter actually   it was um i people were like wary of it  they're hesitant you know and i'm like yeah you   but you're thinking about like okay  now you're gonna do all of your screens   and compose and i wouldn't think about it that  way i would say you can start with maybe all of   the setting screens that everybody touches once  or never you could do them and compose and then   but you can also do your your main screens  in in fully native and you don't have to make   a big decision and that's always been the  benefit of Kotlin and would continue to be   if composed for ios perhaps ever it appears  right um we can go on a big long discussion about   this compose ui and compose runtime and there's  definitely people running compose runtime on ios   today it's just the ui is a much bigger thing  to implement so yeah so i agree and that's a   critical point about the philosophy of Kotlin  in my opinion like the good interoperability   and flexibility as katja said in the beginning  like you you choose what you want to share   and definitely in that regard we would be very  happy to see a rise to of you know good ui   framework multi-platform framework why compose  currently moves in that direction with the support   of desktop and web targets and definitely  like this question appears so what like   are we going to do uh i in Kotlin in jet brains  are we going to do the ios compose so i cannot   say that but i do want to update the status a  little bit here because last time we answered that   question it really looked like a very very far  away effort from last week we knew that we have   to do a ton of work to make that happen like on  the all levels of ecosystem and our two chain in   libraries and how they are published and how they  are compiled so we are just yeah we would love to   but we cannot do that like we have better stuff  to do unfortunately and now like two years uh   two years passed and now we are much  closer to the technical possibility of such   big and cool frameworks like a multi-platform  compose and like well multiply from compose   already multiplatform for the desktop and web  so it proves that such libraries are possible   and yeah that that is just pretty cool that  the technology moves there and it unlocks   a possibility to avoid such libraries really  hope that we will see something cool let's hope   and smile um the next topic i want to suggest  is well guess what uh we are discussing the   biggest changes in Kotlin multiplatform ecosystem  during this two years we have Kevin here and well   i definitely want to nominate memory manager  memory manager because uh when we speak about   uh about the obstacles the developer face during  their way of integrating kmm of course it's the   i think it's the first thing which come uh  come on mind and uh thanks god uh it's now   not relevant because the experimental  version of the new memory management   is already available uh it lifts the existing  restrictions on object sharing between threads and   don't require any special management or annotation  from the developers so yeah the this this is the   big change definitely and uh i think i have  questions for both of you let's start with Dima   i don't know can you describe how i think it's as  it's a huge change i assume it uh it took a lot of   effort from a team and can you elaborate a little  bit more and maybe share some details on uh how   how difficult it was to to have such such a big  decision to start implementing the new memory   manager well yeah so i'm not directly in charge of  the Kotlin native campfire and there's a separate   team for that and even i know that that was an  incredibly difficult decision for us so yeah like   that's like it's fantastically difficult but  it it it's really cool that uh we got so much   feedback about the memory model about the you  know the freezer freezing memory model because   it really showed how you can came up with really  cool ideas and and yet just adjust and like uh   reiterate on them looking at the feedback you  provide and the community provides and what i can   say for sure that it would have been impossible  to like even think of a decision of scraping   away the old memory model and going with the new  one without the feedback and without the surveys   without interviews our team was doing with  the community so yeah that is pretty cool   because the change is incredibly big  and difficult it basically requires to   rewrite the full uh garbage collector and  garbage collector is like i don't know what like   90 percent of her hand time 99 percent of her  time like a lot of fun time so yeah that is   again i think this is a kind of a you know common  uh common achievement of that siemens community   that we together manage to pull this out and  move into direction which is hopefully better and Kevin i think if we google  uh some tutorials on the   previous on the current uh management  memory manager and how to deal with it   i think your name uh will be the most  popular one and as a person who spent   let's say a lot of time to to create all this  content uh how do you feel about this change   so it's definitely an interesting question  i i got started using Kotlin native uh early   i think as we just touched on um probably i  guess 2017 it was the first attempt to use it so   um it was hard to learn i went through i tell  people there's stages of grief that you go   through when you have the new memory the old  memory model the strict memory model and you   try to get around it and you try to fight  it and then you start to learn it and then   i got to to the very late stages of it actually  affected how i architect things i think for the   better and i um my goal was really to if there was  ever going to be adoption of the technology people   needed to understand the memory model and that's  really why i got um went deep on trying to explain   it and i honestly think if you if you go through  the content and you spend a few years wrestling   with it like you know you really won't mind it  at all but we don't have yours right so like um i   feel like it's the right move for sure to change  the memory model um i remember at Kotlin comp   2019 where there were a lot of discussions with  various team members and it seemed obvious that   that decision was likely going to be  made and my big concern really was just   it's going to take a lot of time to re-implement  it and it's going to take a lot of time to get it   right and um you know it was always around concern  of of the you know people getting adoption gaining   adoption and things working out so i was worried  about that but it was the right decision and   and now it is all about um for me working  with various people in the library community   to make sure that things are ready um we're  you know with our clients we're essentially   you know using a new memory model and this is  a really really good reason for them not to uh   mostly because if you're working on something now  it's not going to be released for a few months   anyway so um yeah i think i think it's good i i  i think people i want some people especially the   community thought that i was uh loved the memory  model and that's why i talked about it so much   and i wouldn't say i loved it or hated it but it  was definitely just if adoption is going to happen   people need to understand it and now they don't  so let's all pretend like it didn't happen and and   then we'll move on what will be the next Kevin's  topic now now you don't have this memory model uh   i don't know that i mean there is a bit of like  i'm not gonna lie there's part of my identity that   was attached to explaining the memory model yeah  that's why i'm asking i'm watching i don't know   i'm like trying to figure that out i i have found  over time though that um in tech you often will   go down a path that ultimately does not work  out and if you're doing weird or new stuff   and uh you just have to learn to say all right  i've made a decision that this is over and that's   it i can just move on once you made the decision  it's not so bad so i think now it is definitely   um it's really more around architectural uh  pattern decisions as we get into declarative view   view things especially because the whole  android community is talking about compose   and how you architect things just for android  well how does it translate when you're gonna   do probably swift ui on the ios maybe maybe not  how do you get co-routines up into the ios layer   things like that but yeah we'll see the memory  model was something that i could kind of own   now i can't own any particular thing so i have to  move on but i will i think biggest changes they   always imply biggest challenges and we've already  started to discuss it with a memory manager story   but also speaking about challenges i want to  mention and discuss one interesting feature   hierarchical project structure i find it  interesting because uh from the point of   view of a regular mobile developer its value  well it's it's pretty basic you can just use   this magic ios shortcut in your build gradle file  and now ide can help you to use platform apis ios   apis for example foundation library and it will  highlight your code to help with after completion   and all the regular stuff we usually expect from  the ide but as a part of the team i know this is   just of the tip of an iceberg so Dima i think you  have a lot to say on this topic oh yeah sure but i   i will try to keep it short because we don't have  three hours right so uh but yeah so that that is   really an interesting case of a feature which  as you mentioned doesn't look like a you know   big change but it's interesting how it stems from  the philosophical design choices we've made in the   Kotlin mountain platform and like one of those  design choices is that your code supposed to be   analyzed once uh on the platform you're currently  on and you're supposed to see like most of   perfectly all errors and warnings you would get  if you run or compile this code on other hosts   so know this stuff like you have written your code  against posix and it works perfectly fine on your   linux machine but then you move your code to  windows and everything fails because the posix   is different on windows we really want you to  get away from that and well it took much more   because it costed much more than what we would  have anticipated so basically in the process of   supporting this feature we had to write a pretty  unique piece of software which is able to look   at the native libraries for each host like for  example in the example i used before on posix   for windows and posix for linux and find  the api which is present on both platforms   like which is safe to use in your shared code so  this is pretty cool because then we can say that   yeah like be careful this file don't use this  function in your shared code because it will   be absent on another host you compiled  to but yeah it was not easy and this is   really interesting because like it it  shows that the it's also like the uh   it answers that kind of the question you asked  before like what is the difference between   multi-platform and the mobile multi platform  because this feature is mostly not requested   by the mobile users because for them the ios  libraries there they have very similar api and if   something isn't present on i don't know simulator  for example well you just know that you know you   know that you are not supposed to use this or  you get a crash when you run your application   but when you get into different cases like with  the desktop platforms oh yeah and posix then   you need this stuff and yeah so that that is the  difference and that is some feature which mostly   boils down to multi-platform not exactly mobile  albeit mobile users probably will be happy as well   we don't need all these hacks anymore in this  gradle file sorry sorry this is my my pain in   retrospect do you think it would have been easier  just to rewrite postx i i don't know but i this you you know there's the degree of despair we  went because this is a actual question for us   like in retrospective i'm not sure what would have  been easier but at least like we are prepared for   everything now like it's not just one posix  we have to rewrite and then it comes with   another library and another library and another  and we have rewrite them over and over now we have   a technology which does it for us automatically  so yeah column multiplatform is a super ambitious   project and that's even putting it lightly i  think in demon you've you've been challenged a   lot to make sure that these things are working on  different platforms and listening to the audience   and understanding like where do they need you to  be doing that work to make life better for them um   we uh at Touchlab and like Kevin said this is not  a uh an advertisement we're not gonna put a book   up here by the the the touch lab way of calling  multi-platform um but we do talk to a lot of   clients and they're putting it into production  um and they have their own things to deal with   while putting it into production um so Kevin what  are some interesting cases and what are we what's   occupying your mind lately um to to make sure that  this is this technology is adoptable at scale so   you know we spend i would say the bulk of our time  now uh some of it's on greenfield apps for smaller   teams and that's interesting i actually expected  a little less of that than we're seeing but it's   good um but i would say the bulk of our time is  we're working with teams that are essentially   either trying to figure out how to scale their  mobile development with the shared code modules or   which ultimately results in kind of having an sdk  team but it's less official or to the extreme we   have clients that are quite literally saying that  we have this internal sdk team that publishes sdks   to other parts of our org privately you know  how do we how do we deal with that and and   for us um a lot of this comes down to a  few a few smaller situations essentially uh   teams at that scale they have ios engineers  who don't necessarily want to even know that   they're talking to Kotlin or dealing with any  of that stuff and it's figuring out how to get   those automated framework construction  builds the umbrella frameworks you know   built and published into some form of internal  repo that they can just download and we're um   going through that expanding on that and  trying to find the best patterns for those   kind of situations and taking them further so  you know okay you didn't compile this in your   local machine or the libraries that are that it's  talking to but you can you know debug them if you   need to and then if you want to actually edit  the code it's it's you don't have to do anything   crazy you can just flip the switch and essentially  point at a local build and do stuff like that so   it's figuring out those problems uh for teams at  scale and we're getting a little in the weeds on   sort of relatively complex ci configurations so  so you know you never have this moment where your   your fresh clone is broken that kind of stuff but  that's that's a much deeper topic but yeah that's   what my whole day is kind of that and it gets  subtle but there's there's sdk design issues   like you you really want to let your android  side have full access to the co-routine's   endpoints and you want to let android manage  the lifecycle of code routines but on ios   you can't and and the other thing we're doing a  lot more than i expected is actually Kotlin js   multiple clients out of nowhere  wanted to also publish a   js version their sdk so how you design your  modules and how you design the public api surface   it gets an interesting specialty you spent a  lot of time thinking about it and you could do   interesting stuff but it's it's not always  obvious the issues you're going to run into   and that's kind of what we're figuring out so  summary we're doing a lot of sdk work that's it   well thanks edema and thanks Kevin for being  here for the audience i'm sure you've already   liked and subscribed as soon as you saw who our  guests were um but we do need your feedback um   discussions on what topics you'd like to hear uh  who else we should invite please leave comments um   so we can make the best show that we can for  you uh cats i think you have one last thing to   to do with us yeah yeah sure um i think  before we go we need to have some fun and   i believe that it would be great to finish each of  our episodes with you know with an advice from our   guests because we have this ability we invited an  expert so advices are great everyone loves advices   but i promised it would be fun so Kevin Dima i  have one pretty basic and simple question for you if i if i start developing mobile application in  2022 how should i decide which technologies to use   and why i say fun because i need wrong answers  only i i definitely think i've been seeing people   talking about using Kotlin for shared code and  then putting flutter on top of that as your ui   and i think that that's you should only do that  and don't learn anything else and don't read any   of the of the documentation while you do it  that's definitely how you should get started   and what would that be named uh that  would be called clutter there is a library   called clutter but i did say that three years  ago and when i say i i mean i took someone else's   name and said it but i gave them credit anyway  yeah yeah and yeah my answer would be ask credit that's a much better answer but anyway  sorry flutter people i think i actually   said flutter flans earlier let me think  back on it uh flutter's great you should all   definitely check out flutter yeah so yeah like  if we apologize for jokes like so here i just myself honestly that was amazing the best part  of the interview sorry folks and see you in the next episode

2022-02-14 03:10

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