Cliques in Android
There is a word for this, I’m pretty sure.
In a software community (it doesn’t matter which one) there are always mantras, things the community consider true and repeating them in talks or conversations is a proof of belonging to the group, some sort of an insider joke.
If you are outside the community you don’t know those mantras and usually, you are taught just the opposite in circles outside the community, like universities, non-opinionated books or online courses.
The javascript and ruby communities have several of those mantras, usually modeled in writing idiomatic ruby or JS and leading to huge fights about the importance of semicolons.
The Android community has some also, usually grounded on bad API design in the Android core. I consider them well founded but I’m a bit afraid of repeating them without justifying them.
I find myself discussing them with students, novices in Android or people from other languages and I spend too much time sending links about the reasons behind those judgments. So I’m writing down several of those links.
The most important ones (right now) are:
Async Tasks are BAD:
Yeah shocking, I know, if you are inside
- Good post of Dan Lew about some of the problems
- An older post
- A good recopilation
- This talk explains some alternatives
Fragments should be avoided, if possible:
- The famous post that it started all
- A good talk explaining alternatives
Event buses should be used with caution
Or not at all
The best way of staying up-to-date in the alternatives are following the slack community, reddit, conferences and talks…
PD: I’m not against mantras, per se. I’m against repeating without understanding the underlying problems :)
Photo by etnyk
