🔭 Software you should own as a Junior Android Developer
As a developer, you can’t just write code all the time.
While working on projects you will use a lot of software, tools, and utilities to bring your code from your notes as an idea to the marketplace as a product.
Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is a big process that includes a lot of subprocesses. SDLC can be defined differently by any organization, but it usually consists of the following activities that work together to mature a concept into a software product: business requirements gathering and analysis, design, implementation (building), testing, production release, and postrelease maintenance and support.
You don’t need to be a designer to write a code, but, as a developer, at least you have to know how to export the application’s styles into your IDE.
⚙️ IDE (Integrated development environment)
First of all, you have to choose the software where you plan to write the code. For Android development, there are a few options: Android Studio, Intellij Idea, or Eclipse.
Let’s review all of them in brief:
Android Studio — in my opinion, the AS is brilliant. Comparing it to other IDEs this is the best IDE ever. A lot of developers after seeing what AS can tell that their IDE is incapable.
It really was strongly designed for Android Developers to move the development to the next level.
AS solves a lot of things for developers and makes their life better by using an amazing collection of features that nobody has.
The official description of AS is:
“The fastest developer tools for building market-leading apps and accelerating performance. With an intelligent code editor, flexible build system, realtime profilers, and emulators.’’
And it’s the absolute truth. The only bad thing I can say about AS is that it uses a lot of RAM, but it’s worth it, especially if you have a powerful machine 😉
Intellij Idea — this IDE is also cool. But for me, it looks like a more general place to write code.
It might be used for JS, Java, Kotlin, Scala, and so on. It has an extensive list of features but these things are not extensively aimed at Android only.
I like it, I used it, but when I went deep into Android Development I’ve found out that AS is the best for an Android developer.
Otherwise use it because all products by Jetbrains are amazing ✨
Eclipse — is bullshit, that’s all.
Using Eclipse in 2020 is like using Paint instead of Photoshop 🤷♂️.
🎨 Design
For the design, there are two big fishes: Zeplin and Figma.
I used Zeplin for my needs almost till 2020. Last year, I switched to Figma and noticed that almost all of my friends & colleagues are switched too.
Actually, I didn’t get why, so I decided to ask a real designer about that.
I’ve asked one of the best designers I’ve ever met: “Why do people prefer Figma more now?”
Here is his answer:
There was a bunch of Photoshop/Sketch → InVision → Zeplin: Drawing, prototyping, copying styles. Figma overlaps all the stages. With Figma you can draw, prototype, and pick up styles in one place.
Moreover, each of the tools work well. In other words, Figma replaces Zeplin’s functionality, making it unnecessary to export the design, update it in the Zeplin, etc.
So, both software is good enough to work with, but more experienced designers prefer Figma. It will force developers to use Figma too.
💬 Chat
Slack is the absolute leader, and it is not discussed.
You can find out companies that use alternatives, but this is only the stage in searching for something good.
Slack has everything teams need: chat, file sharing systems, in-built calls, custom emoji (is my favourite part), screen sharing and so on.
I also recommend being familiar with Microsoft Teams, but my choice is Slack.
The list of alternatives: Glip, Ryver, MS teams, Flock, Fleep, Chanty, Hangout chat. But, I strongly recommend Slack.
🖥 Conferences call services:
Here is a bit different situation compared to chat software.
People are divided into 3 categories:
- 50% uses Zoom
- 25% uses Google Hangouts (aka Google Meet)
- 25% uses MS Team
What about Skype?
100% of them hate Skype. 🙈
Please, let Skype rest in peace, its time has passed, stop using it.
Zoom is pretty good, so I’ve chosen it. It has everything you need for a conference service: screencasting, screen recorder, flexible settings, unlimited size of the conference, and the quality of the call is perfect.
Google Hangouts is good too, but for some reason, Zoom grew up in this year so much. Maybe Covid-19 & nowadays the requirement to work remotely have impacted somehow. Zoom is like a community choice for some reason.
📋 Task management
Task management is more than just checking off items on a to-do list! It’s an organized system for identifying, monitoring and managing the work you and your team do.
You can find out a lot of software that tries to satisfy users, but the absolute leader is Jira by Atlassian. This is a ginormous machine that can do even more than the user may require.
In case you want something like Jira but smaller because your project has just started or so. You can choose its smaller brother — Trello. This is a super simple service that can lead your project through the first stages.
A list of alternatives to Jira:
- Monday.com
- Nifty
- Quire
- Backlog
- MeisterTask
- Quixy
- Paymo
- Wrike
Good luck with researching the software according to your requirements 😉
🌐 API management
And last but not least is API management. Usually, to work with API people choose Postman as a sandbox for API and Swagger for the documentation.
These allow the development team to visualize and interact with the API’s resources without having any of the implementation logic in place.
Very simple and clear software. Both of them have all of the needed features to work with. There is nothing complicated, so I recommend being familiar with both of them.
The alternative software is Insomnia, I recommend finding out what it is.
🎉 Congratulations, now you’re familiar with tools, software, and utilities that Android developers use every day.
And, in case you didn’t use some of them don’t waste your time imagining what it is, just discovers it for yourself.
Tell me what do you use daily:
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🙂 That’s all for today ;)
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