Ash Davies
Senior Android Developer @ Snapp Mobile GmbH
Berlin, Germany
Google Developer Expert for Android and Kotlin, enthusiastic public speaker, senior engineer at Snapp Mobile, Kotlin aficionado, Multiplatform manipulator, prolific facilitator of cute cat photographs, spends more time travelling than working (he/him)
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This Talk Was Written by a Chat Bot: ChatGPT and the Future of AI Technologies in Android Developmen
The rise of AI technologies is revolutionizing the way developers approach software engineering. From GitHub Copilot to ChatGPT, DALL-E, and Midjourney, AI is increasingly being integrated into the software development process, providing developers with new tools to enhance their productivity and improve the quality of their code.
However, the integration of AI into software engineering is not without its challenges. In this talk, I’ll explore the current state of AI technologies and how they are being integrated into Android development. I’ll discuss how AI can assist developers with small tasks, allowing them to cover larger distances, and how it can be used to identify and fix bugs more quickly and accurately.
I’ll also examine the dangers and pitfalls of AI-assisted engineering, how AI may endanger the development community ecosystem, as well as how it may be used by management and executives to the detriment of engineering and high-quality code. Finally, I will offer insights into how developers can best navigate these challenges and take full advantage of the benefits that AI technologies have to offer.
What a Long Strange Trip it's Been: A Year In Android
The Android community is a fast evolving society of excellent people who passionately involve themselves in their ecosystem. This means the progress of developments can be fast, blazingly fast!
Inspired by other content creators and newsletters that keep us informed about the most recent events, I decided to document news, events, and releases every week for a year. Starting from the end of Droidcon Berlin, the world’s best Android developer conference.
Accompany me in this journey to look over all the events of this last year, from the end of Droidcon Berlin 2022 up until right now!
Ash Rants... Again!
Last year, this session was delivered to rant about any topic given by the audience flip-flopping on command, about how this topic is terrible (or awesome) for Android developers.
This year, will be a little different. How different? Who's to say! Maybe I'll wear a hat.
It could be great, it could be terrible, but it will mostly be embarrassing for me, the speaker.
Beyond the Mockery: Why We Should Embrace Testing Without Mocking Frameworks
In software development, mocking is a popular technique used to simulate dependencies and test behaviour without relying on external systems. However, as with any technique, there are pros and cons to using mocks.
In this talk, I'll discuss why using mocks may not be the best approach and why we should instead use fakes or in-memory implementations of well-defined interfaces. We will explore the drawbacks of mocks, including how they can lead to brittle tests, slow down development, and make it difficult to refactor code.
By contrast, we will see how using fakes or in-memory implementations can provide faster feedback, increase confidence in the code, and make it easier to maintain tests as the codebase evolves. We will look at some examples of how to implement these alternatives, and how to make them useful in different testing scenarios.
Hype Driven Development: How I learned to stop worrying and love the failures
Ever wondered what it would take to combine all the experimental features of a language you love (Spoilers... It's Kotlin!) into one big bundle?
I'm a lover of new and shiny stuff, so let me share with you my experience of using everything shiny, and new, in my pet project, to show you how to *not* do all the things you might want to do with yours!
JetBrains Compose for Desktop, Unstable Coroutines APIs, version catalogues, Gradle composite builds, multiplatform navigation support, multiplatform paging, GraphQl, Firebase Cloud Functions, Molecule, Mosaic, what could go wrong?!
This isn't a fairytale story, when making use of unstable technology, it's not always tested with other unstable technologies; I'm going to tell you of all the things I could have done better, so that you don't need to make the same mistakes!
droidcon Berlin 2023 Upcoming
droidcon San Francisco 2023 Upcoming
Ash Davies
Senior Android Developer @ Snapp Mobile GmbH
Berlin, Germany