Android Studio; Kotlin and more with Stephanie Saad Cuthbertson Video Lecture | Coffee with a Googler - IT & Software

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anybody who's been to any developer
event the last couple of years and
usually Android or Android studios in
the keynote Stephanie you're the person
that we get to see you get to make all
the cool announcements and this year at
i/o was a particularly special one could
you tell us about it it was an
incredible year Android had a whole ton
of developer announcements that we were
super excited about and I think probably
everybody knows Colin was at the top of
our list and apples a lot of people's
list okay so did a great job keeping
that a secret right it was like such a
big surprise a great reveal that was
really tough it was it was something
that community had been asking us for
again and again and in fact one of the
funniest moments behind the scenes was
about three weeks I think before I
always had olabs which is one of the
events where we bring a ton of apps on
state air we bring a ton of apps and
just to help them get ready for oh so
they're probably like 250 apps they're
maybe 300 or representatives from the
various top apps and somebody in the
audience asked Mike clarin who's the
director of the framework Mike what do
you think about Kotlin and what are you
guys gonna top the column and of course
we had made the decision and we were you
know just pulling up for i/o Mike had
actually helped me co-write that keynote
speech which we were rehearsing by then
and Mike you could see his face you know
just kind of light up and he turns to
the person he says you know there's a
lot going on with Colin and I'm sure
you're seeing a lot we're seeing
everything you're seeing and we just
want you to know that and I thought you
know as soon as he's already
I know if not I don't need to actually
blown the whole surprise so I
immediately went and checked reddit like
the next afternoon because I I thought
someone's gonna be able to read through
between the lines but nobody did and it
was a surprise so that's that's good I'm
like social media lit up after it was
announced and it was overwhelming yeah
well I think it was just what it was
what everyone wanted and it was the
right decision and everyone knew it was
the right decision so I think it was
really a credit to the community that
they were so clear with us about like
look this is the right thing to adopt in
fact the the way we've talked about it
is entirely accurate I think Colin's
incredible
for the Android platform because it's so
rare that you get a language that's so
mature
it's a five-year-old language it's
highly mature it's gone through a 100
stage and yet you can adopt it into apps
completely integrated so you can have a
set an app that has Java code and Kotlin
code completely integrated so at the
point of announced most languages are
still in a developmental stage an early
stage and Kotlin is really in a very
mature state on a platform that is very
widely scaled so it was super unusual
and to have that plus the IDE support
because the same people designing the
language built the IDE was just amazing
and so I think we're really excited I
was just perfect serendipity well writes
it was the right time the right stuff
and all that canon yeah now you work on
Android studio I do we talk a lot about
Android studio so how are things going
with Android studio they're going really
well ok yes so just released version 3
yes version 3 is currently in Canary
then the next stage for us right after
that will be beta and version 3 is the
one that supports current release of
Android right now for a developer like
me an Android developer I started
cutting my Android teeth with Eclipse
it was interesting it had its moments
and you know but it was still it was
great to have that power to be able to
develop and deploy on to something so
Android studio was the next logical step
and I came from a world with visual
studio beforehand so Android studio felt
much more familiar and it was exciting
but it's come a long way in the couple
of years right and it has and I think
that really reflects the investment in
IDE one of the things that happened for
us was we realized several years ago
that Android had scaled massively and as
Android scaled the developer community
was also scaling massively and that's in
you know people think about in a
us-based community people who are in the
US but really if you think about the
European community is enormous
the Chinese developer community Android
is huge the Indian community is
exploding Brazil there's so many
different places and I think what had
happened is we really outstripped the
IDE and we needed to invest very deeply
to give developers what they needed and
developers were very articulate about
the features they needed which was
awesome and so what you're seeing really
is a reflection of increasing investment
in Android studio and that investment is
continuing to increase and so there are
a number of features that have come out
in the past several years that I think
are super exciting and I think you
should expect to see that continue
so yeah it's been a really fun time so I
have a couple of favorite features
coming yeah so I absolutely love the new
assistance particularly the firebase
assistance that is so cool you know the
original design for that feature was one
where the you came in and there was just
all this stuff you had to connect here
and do this and do that and we looked at
it and we thought even we can't figure
out how to get through that why don't we
make it a step-by-step process and I
think the results is so useful because
it's relatively straightforward in fact
we're using that same assistant concept
now with other types of guided journeys
through the IDE and I think that's gonna
be a really good baseline yeah I can't
wait to see some of the others because
I've been writing a book on firebase and
it used to be you made me write on my
chapters by the way it used to be those
I can't go to the console turn this on
turn that on get the Google services
JSON file downloaded file the right find
the right folder in your app put it in
now it's the firebase assistant clicking
button even the dependencies are added
to the build up Gradle it's beautiful
I'm looking forward to seeing more and
then my other favorite is the emulator
yes right it used to be that the
scenarios you get in the emulator were
kind of limited it needed a real device
to do it but now there's just so much
stuff happening in the emulator and yeah
you've even added like the Google Play
Store so things like Google Play
services will update automatically yep
as I'm building my apps for it so thank
you great work oh I'm so glad you like
it yeah I feel like the emulator itself
particularly has come so far as in terms
of performance because it's so snappy
and responsive now it's actually much
faster for me to deploy under the
emulator than a device and I typically
do development on both but also the
feature set is really nice like being
able to turn Network on and off and
mocking maps this is one of my favorite
and gets like that so I think there's
there's still a lot more we can do with
the emulator I I personally think it'd
be great to have it you know incredibly
fast I think it would be wonderful to
see the emulator have more features
especially things like different types
of network connectivity or things that
developers in emerging markets talk
about developers in the US and Europe
targeting those markets so there's so
much more that we can do but I think it
really is one where it's now a mainline
part of the workflow we don't release
adoption stats but it's just going
through the roof people using it
Stephanie smiling now but I gave her a
hard time about the emulator my Google
Play services for a long time but yes
they're not anymore
that is true that was true that was yeah
that was a good you're right do you have
any favorite features yourself I do I
think you
I mentioned one of them emulators
definitely one of my favorites I
personally really like constraint layout
when the initial version of constraint
layout came out I was playing with
different layouts and I find it's super
useful especially in the new world where
are you seeing a lot of dynamic form
factors it's really useful to be able to
define things in relation to each other
as opposed to having those static
definitions so that's a huge favorite
for me yes there are little things that
are my favorite sounds like big things
like that constraint layout which
obviously was a huge investment the
build time improvements especially if
you've tried 3.0 and you have a huge
project you will find the build and sync
improvements are amazing and I you know
probably like you and other folks for
building big projects I have some pretty
big complex apps and the incremental
build times are just so much better I
feel like I feel like that will probably
be something we'll be working on for a
long time because developers always tell
us we just can't make it too fast it can
never be too fast actually what a funny
story with that is that for me that give
for a lot of the small test apps that
I've been building so many times like I
thought that app hasn't deployed to the
emulator yet yep and it's like you know
so I have a previous version running and
then I compile and like get it to run
the next version and I go away and do
something for a couple of minutes and
then I come back and I and I think it's
my old version it's still there but the
new one is on there and I'm like come on
hurry up and they don't realize that
anyone is there and it's just it's
having used to it being a little bit
slower and now that it's getting faster
and faster it's like I have to change
the way I do things yeah I think kind of
cool we want it to just be like instant
I think the other one I'd mentioned too
and this is kind of one of the smaller
but cool ones I think lint is really
useful because it's like your extra
brain all it's like the Rumsfeld
quadrant things you don't know you don't
know it tells you to look for yeah
exactly because like you can end up
writing some pretty ugly code without
realizing it
other people have to maintain it so the
linting tools were yes I definitely make
mistakes so if I made like a developer
getting started with Android studio with
Android in general or mobile development
in general - what would you tell me like
I would tell you two things I would tell
you download Android studio and I would
recommend taking a look at Kotlin I
think that again the inside story of how
we adopted Kotlin is essentially that
one person after another person tried it
and
convinced the next person down the line
that they had to try it and they had to
try it it's one of those languages that
you just fall in love with because the
more you use it the more delightful you
realize it is so I think I would
probably recommend doing a few things
absolutely I'm with Kotlin for example
and just a funny story for me was that a
week before i/o I was doing some talks
at a conference in the UK and they were
doing like a round of lightning talks
and I did a talk on Google Maps and the
idea was they wanted to get like an
applause a meter and then the Google
Maps applause-o-meter was like it it was
really good news like yeah yeah I'm
gonna win this thing and then a guy came
on after me and spoke about this thing
called Kotlin that I'd never heard of
and the crowd went wild and I'm like
okay I have to learn about Kotlin and if
next week I'm sitting in the audience
said IO and you do the whole K thing and
we got Cartman in Android studio so I
was like score I'll never forget the
same thing happened to me some I was in
London and someone told me you've got to
try this language and you know it was
kind of working its way through the
engineering team and I got on the plane
I had you know two books on Kotlin and
my laptop is ten hours and I got on the
plane and I thought wow you know this
I'm not sure we can really put another
programming language on Android and by
the time I landed I was thinking to
myself okay we gotta figure out how
we're gonna do this this is just so
awesome yeah and I think when the neat
things and it was something we did an
episode with Geoffrey Franco and what he
shared with us is the fact that how it
interrupts with existing Java code yeah
it's not like if you've got existing
Java libraries you have to throw them
away and rewrite them and can't learn it
like you can start consuming and vice
versa yeah right and then also the
tooling you've got your file new
Cartland experience so yeah you don't
feel that you have to start from Ground
Zero to be able to build in Kotlin
because you can actually reuse your
existence I think that's the one thing
too that was also very eye-opening for
me when I use the language because you
think Oh a new language I'm gonna have
to learn all this new stuff and start
over and what you really want to know is
wouldn't it be cool if I could be able
to write all of my code and write it you
know many times faster but do it in a
way where learning the new syntax
learning the new language is gonna be
really easy for me and where I can just
take little pieces of it at a time and
in fact that's exactly what Colin is
because I think for most people they'd
say when they learn Colin for anyone who
knows the Java programming language
already it's really
not difficult it's there's so many
concepts and paradigms that are really
familiar so it's not like you're you
know moving in some huge direction like
you started with Java now you're gonna
learn the C++ which I remember when I
learned that I thought okay this is hard
so it's it's quite seamless and and that
plus the fact that you can take a nap
that's already completely working in
Java and then just try a little piece of
it in Collin means it's so easy to just
dip your toe in and get really
comfortable and the IDE makes it so
seamless because you can you know
literally just drop a class and it'll
convert for you it's the difference team
is amazing so they're really good yeah
so for somebody to get started Android
studio we'll put the link in the
comments I will put the link in the
description of the video here so people
own it so thank you so much Stephanie
that's been a real blast yeah having so
much fun geeking out over Android studio
with you and thanks everybody for
watching this episode of coffee with a
Googler if you have any questions for me
or any questions for Stephanie just
please leave them in the comments below
well thanks again thank you Cheers thank
you so much