Systems | Development | Analytics | API | Testing

Imagine you’re a toolmaker. You’ve got an old-school toolshed with loads of ancient equipment: hammers, pickaxes, all the stuff people used hundreds of years ago. And then one day you walk into your toolshed to find laser cutters, 3D printers and loads of other digital tools at your disposal. Life would suddenly seem a lot simpler, right?

Last week, we got a question from one of our users asking us how to use Kotlin Apply. Specifically, the reader wanted to know whether it was best to use the apply function in their Android application, or another of the many Kotlin scope functions. So we got to thinking: Why not write an article about the whole topic of Kotlin scope functions? After all, they’re awesome: they let us write readable, concise code in Kotlin, and work with an object without the need for repeated references.

Concurrency is the ability of an app to perform multiple tasks at once, and it’s a crucial concept for apps that need to perform multiple tasks at once in an efficient, usable way. Thankfully Swift has made great strides with concurrency, and now provides simple tools for writing robust apps that are responsive and enjoyable to use. In this article we’ll explore two main ways of using threads for concurrency models.

Navigation is one of the most basic functionalities of any app, and among the most crucial aspects of our work as developers. From replacing a login screen with our actual logged-in state app, to showing a modal with details of any item inside our app, all of these are navigational challenges we need to tackle in our day-to-day. SwiftUI has introduced a modern approach to navigation in Apple-based platforms.

In Android, ImageView is a widget used to show an image, so it’s vital for every kind of app we build. In fact, it’s the most common widget that we’ll use as Android developers. The image can be a profile image, graphic, or any other type of image, and it can be loaded from a res/drawable folder or an external source. ImageView is pretty straightforward once you’ve got the hang of it, but there’s some stuff we need to know if we’re going to make the most of the widget.

Animations make our apps seem more alive, approachable and interactive, and they add that extra level of polish, which is crucial in an age of ever-greater consumer choice. One of the great things about Swift is that it provides a range of animation functionality straight out of the box. In this post, we’ll explore some of this functionality and demonstrate some popular techniques for SwiftUI animations, so you can use them on your own projects.

Mobile data provides the eyes and ears of a modern business. It helps us understand where our audience is, what they want to know and what they respond to most enthusiastically. And it can make our apps run faster, too. In a world of ever-increasing consumer choice, this kind of stuff doesn’t just matter. It’s crucial. However, while mobile data can lead to new ideas, it can also be very dangerous if not used properly.

Jetpack Compose (sometimes mistakenly called Android Compose) is a powerful new UI toolkit for Android that embodies the principle of ‘Code As UI’, offering aa simpler and faster way to build native android UI using a declarative approach. Of all the UI components in Jetpack Compose, buttons have a special place, as these are the cornerstone of our user interface. They allow the user to take actions, submit forms, and navigate around the app smoothly.

When building apps, it’s tempting to dive right into writing code. But if we do this, there’s a good chance that our code will eventually break, as new changes are made and new features are introduced. This is particularly true of React, a library that’s constantly evolving. Testing in React isn’t only about catching hidden bugs but also about maintaining code quality day-to-day.

Pickers enable Android developers to minimize error-free input and optimize everyday features of their apps, such as date selection, delivering crucial gains in user experience. Users can validate input data by pressing a single button, and ensure structured input without any typing errors (in fact users don’t need to type an input at all). And we can customize the picker to our specific needs, creating better UI for our users.