Maia Grotepass

Staff Engineer: Android competency lead at Luno

Stellenbosch, South Africa

Mobile dev since Cupcake. Android GDE. Kotlin enthusiast. Dogs make me happy.

Awards

Area of Expertise

Information & Communications Technology

Topics

Android Development
Android
Android software Development
Kotlin
Kotlin Multiplatform

A walk in the Lindenmayer fractal forests with a Kotlin notebook

Some pieces of Kotlin code are better discovered through exploration. Code for a Lindenmayer system (Lsystem) is an example of this. These systems can generate beautiful organic looking fractal structures. A few small tweaks cause unexpected variety: perfect for experimentation. Kotlin Notebooks are especially suited for experimental and exploratory coding.

This talk will showcase the use of Kotlin Notebooks to draw a series of Lsystem trees. It will be a live code session in IntelliJ with a shareable Kotlin Notebook as a result.

You do not need to be a data scientist to enjoy this talk.

The audience will:

- See Kotlin Notebooks in action with the focus on reusable canvas drawing
- See an iterative coding workflow that explores code and visuals
- Learn about Lindenmayer systems
- Receive a link to the talk Notebook which they can copy and modify to continue the experiments in their own time

This talk has not been presented anywhere. It is suitable for any audience that is curious about Kotlin code and Kotlin Notebooks and is looking for an entertaining interactive coding experience. You do not need to be a data scientist to enjoy this talk. 40min

Doodle sketching in Compose mobile and desktop

Do you remember the freedom of doodling without knowing what the outcome would be? What if this were possible in a coding framework such as Compose? This talk explores experimenting with still visuals and animations using Jetpack compose for Android and Desktop.

We will look at:

- How the animation loop works
- Basic drawing features available in Jetpack
- Compose and differences between mobile and desktop
- Useful add on libraries for creative coding with Jetpack Compose
- Some inspirations to kickstart our doodles
- Live code demo

duration: 40 min
target audience: Beginner to intermediate Compose and creative coding enthusiasts
This talk was presented online as a workshop for IWD Nairobi 2023

90s Website … in 2023 on mobile in Compose … for science

Why would anyone build something with a 90s website aesthetic - in Compose? Nostalgia? For one the 90s website aesthetic made heavy use of animations and visual effects. So emulating this style will take any animation framework through its paces. This talk will take some of the most iconic 90s website elements and demonstrate how to reproduce them to build a retro mobile experience using Jetpack Compose.

I can’t promise the end result will have a good user experience but I can promise a good look at the animation system in Compose and a collection of cheesy code snippets.

duration: 40 min
target audience: Beginner to intermediate Compose enthusiasts
This talk was presented at Android Makers 2023, droidcon NY and droidcon London

Imperative, declarative, object oriented, functional: four of a Kotlin kind

Humans have small working memory but good pattern matching skills. The problems we want to solve are large and complex. How can the approach we take make it easier to deal with complexity, especially if the approach is supported by the language we choose.

This talk is a comparative view of four interrelated programming paradigms: imperative, declarative, object oriented and functional - from a Kotlin perspective.

This talk will cover in depth details of the language features that are especially suitable for each of the paradigms. It will highlight how each language feature helps to deal with complexity.

This talk may also contain:
* brief definitions
* snippets of software history

A simplified version of this talk was presented at the I code Java conference in person in South Africa. It is suitable for intermediate Kotlin audiences. This talk was presented at appdevcon 2023

She started talking about DI and you wont believe what happened next - 7 tips for better tech talks

A click bait title won't keep your audience awake. In this talk I look at my experiences as technical speaker and extract the most important tips and strategies to keep an audience engaged no matter how boring the topic.

20 min This presentation is suitable for all levels. This talk was chosen as the keynote for DevFest South Africa 2022