jetc.dev Newsletter Issue #17

Published: 2020-06-09

In this issue, we look at states and threads, Joe Birch’s latest work, and what properties you can add to a @Preview. Plus, I look at a likely Compose casualty: data binding.

One Off the Stack, One Off the Slack

You’ve got questions. That’s understandable!

This was not a good week for Compose questions in Stack Overflow. If you have questions, don’t be afraid to ask!

My Kingdom for a Frame!

Sometimes, when you go to mutate a state, you get a “Not in a frame” error. There are workarounds, pending some Compose changes to make this error obsolete.

Composable Commentary

Posts, videos, and other new information related to Jetpack Compose!

Compose Academy

Joe Birch has set up a Web site with a collection of Compose samples, tied into his forthcoming book.

@Preview Annotation Properties

Did you know that you can put properties on the @Preview annotation, to control how it looks and works in the Android Studio preview pane? Here, I explore some of the available options.

Resource Roundup

100% pure code!

GitHub - vipulyaara / Kafka

Vipul Kumar is working on a multi-lingual audiobook and audio content player, using Compose and ExoPlayer for the UI.

GitHub - alexjlockwood/ring-of-circles-compose

Alex Lockwood has a Compose implementation of a relatively complex “ring of circles” animation.

GitHub - sagar2093 / bmi-compose

Sagar Chapagain is working on porting a Flutter body-mass index (BMI) calculator to Compose.

GitHub - chavanshashank / NewsArch

Shashank Chavan has another rendition of a news reader app, built using Compose.

…And One More Thing

Jetpack Compose is likely to be real, and it is likely to be spectacular. While it is possible it could go the way of past promoted technologies (slices, I’m looking at you), that seems unlikely. There is too much engineering effort going into Compose, and the competitive pressure of Swift UI should prevent Compose from getting sent to the dustbin. On the contrary, I expect Google to be promoting Compose extensively, with a campaign reminiscent of how they promoted Kotlin, once they elected to support it.

A theme that I will be returning to from time to time, such as in an upcoming presentation, is how we can be preparing our apps to be ready for Compose, once Compose becomes stable.

One of the likely casualties of Compose is data binding. Data binding is based on binding expressions in layout resources, and Compose largely does away with layout resources. Instead of a mix of layout resource XML, binding expression syntax, and the Java/Kotlin in your activities/fragments/presenters/etc., Compose lets it all just be in Kotlin.

This does not mean that you need to be ripping out your data binding today, if you adopted it. However, projects that had been considering a move to data binding might want to reconsider. Perhaps more so than any other single bit of existing Android technology, data binding feels like something that will become “tech debt” rapidly once Compose ships in stable form.