Exploration of Thought

We just released Episode #2 of the Fragmented Podcast. This week Kaushik and I discuss our IDE of choice - Android Studio (and IntelliJ). Enjoy. :)

I bumped into an article that reads like an article that I would have written back in the late nineties when I was learning to program. Heck, to this day I’m still learning how to program. In software, the day you stop learning is the day you become obsolete. It was late 1998 and I was…

I'd like to formally announce the launch of a new podcast - Fragmented. The Fragmented Podcast is hosted by myself and Kaushik Gopal. Kaushik reached out to me earlier this year to discuss the possibility of starting a podcast around Android Development. We discussed it and we found that we had a lot of the same…

Update 2017-04-04: I'm revisiting this because I'm once again at an inflection point - do I go this year or not? I found myself running the numbers again (as I do in the post below) and what I came to the conclusion is: I don't think its worth it. Why the flip-flop? Well, simply put…

Over the last few years, I’ve improved my quality of life by following a  few heuristics when it comes to social media and they are ... 1. Kill The Negative If what you’re about to post is negative, don’t post it. It's that simple. I was very guilty of this for a long time. Before…

Like it or not, we all have favorites and this rings true even in technology. Some people love JavaScript, Node and AngularJS and some people love Ruby on Rails and some people love to use Java with Spring and some people love .NET with ASP.NET MVC … etc … etc … etc … you get…

File this under “I’m writing this so when I Google for it in 6 months, it pops up”.    I recently set up an existing Android project with Espresso 2.0 and immediately stared running into this error when I ran the tests:  I spent some time last night fighting this error and then I figured out…

Last week I tweeted something that got some conversations going: One of the best habits you can get into before committing code is viewing all the changes in a diff tool. 9/10 times you forgot something. — Donn Felker (@donnfelker) December 5, 2014 The tweet itself was not a huge novel concept and it's something…

When I used to run a record label I got really into audio products. Almost to the point of being a full blown Audiophile. I did gain some valuable insight in to the world of audio from my experience. I now respect quality sound. Nice deep bass, proper treble that isn’t “tinny” and overall a…

Why I Use Crashlytics Part 2 In Part 1, I discussed how to set up Crashlytics to get intricate data about the crashes, devices, and how to easily view this data from within Android Studio. In this article I’m going to discuss how this data can help you fix the most critical crashes with minimal…

I often get asked what libraries I use when writing new greenfield Android apps or what libraries I introduce when I start working for a new client when helping them with an existing application they already have in production. Of course I always rely on a few key libraries such as Dagger, Otto/RxJava, Retrofit and…

Stop, right now, look how you’re sitting. You’re probably leaning in towards the screen with your shoulders hunched. You probably look like you’re hugging a beach ball. You’re killing your back, neck and spine in the process. It is what it is, but it doesn’t have to be. I have something to admit – my…