r/mAndroidDev

I'm not for ditching any use of AI altogether but the way it's being used by people, by some colleagues (example: responding to PR comments with AI generated paragraphs which just waste my time.., or doing big refactoring to have "cleaner architecture" for no critical reason), and how some companies are pushing so hard to fully replace human beings with agents, is depressing.

I do like using AI to just code the exact implementation I'm asking it to do, so I'm still very much involved in the thought process and checking each step. But the PRs I start to see at work from people who are supposed to be senior engineers, make me realize that some are just not applying critical thinking anymore and just letting the agents do whatever as long as it looks kinda good and they're making the reviewers go through the pain of trying to understand the bullshit and catch regressions through the mess.
People are falling victim to the way AI speaks with such confidence even when completely hallucinating and it's terrifying.

It feels like people are in a collective psychosis and that it will not ever stop. It honestly makes me want to stop being an android developer, or at least stop being one at a company (perhaps try to finally make an indie app? but I'd have a better chance at making money as a barista).

Does anyone feel the same sense of dread lately or are you riding the wave just fine ? ...

(Sorry if this has already been talked before, I admit I haven't checked reddit in awhile and came back just to get feedback from other android devs)

I'm curious how everyone are navigating the current moment in Android.

Jetpack Compose has finally hit a point where I don't feel like I'm fighting the framework. The early days of fighting recomposition bugs and mystery performance issues feel mostly behind us. I'd say it's actually a better UI model than what we had with Views , it just took a while to trust it.

Kotlin Multiplatform is where I'm less sure. The pitch is compelling but I keep hearing mixed things about teams actually sharing business logic at scale. Anyone running KMP in production on a non-trivial app? What does the reality look like?

The on-device AI stuff is moving fast. MediaPipe and the Gemini Nano integrations are interesting, but I'm still trying to figure out where this actually belongs in app architecture vs just being a feature bolt-on. Offline-first apps with local inference feel genuinely useful for the right use cases, but the model size and battery tradeoffs are real.

Biggest thing I keep coming back to: developer productivity has improved a lot , better tooling, better language, better architecture guidance , but the fragmentation problem never really went away.

What's the thing you think is most under appreciated or underused in Android right now?

so this happened about 4 months ago and i'm still a little bitter about it.

100% pass rate on our test suite the morning we deployed. i checked twice because i was feeling good about the release. deployed at noon. by 2pm we had 40 support tickets and our product manager was texting me.

the thing is the tests weren't even wrong. they were just testing in conditions that don't reflect how anyone actually uses the app. everything ran on a Pixel 6 emulator, wifi, english locale, software keyboard closed. clean little controlled environment.

the bug was a keyboard overlapping the confirm button on the checkout screen. on Samsung devices. One UI does keyboard insets slightly differently and our layout wasn't compensating. we had three samsung users on the team. none of them caught it because when you're testing your own app you muscle memory through it and you're not looking for subtle layout shifts.

honestly the bug itself wasn't even that bad. it was patched in like 2 hours. what messed with me was how confident i was that morning. i had looked at that green dashboard and felt genuinely good about shipping.

we run flows across device profiles now before any release. started using drizz for this specifically, it catches the "this breaks on hardware we didn't test on" stuff that emulators miss. but the lesson i can't shake is that passing tests just means the things you thought to test are working. it says nothing about the things you didn't think to test.

SDD is making quite a buzz these days. But its more on a fuzzy side and more like a trendy term. While many brains are still navigating through it I and my team have found a refuge that could work for you as well for time being. Or you may even leverage it further. This, to the point article will explain how can we be more focus towards Context Engineering without being mind fogged. This is not a pitch for a product, a framework, or a library. There is nothing to install. It is a description of a protocol

Craft Over Chaos : A Developer Protocol for Working with AI Agents

https://preview.redd.it/y4c9e41nq9yg1.png?width=1682&format=png&auto=webp&s=396dce475362ad82eb759271377240233744f65c

#android #sdd #agentic-development

Hello everyone,

I’ve always admired the Haven: Keep Watch project (Guardian Project). It’s a brilliant piece of privacy tech, but unfortunately, it hasn't seen much activity lately and has compatibility issues with modern Android versions.

I’ve decided to build a version from scratch to bring it back to life.

My Background & The "Vibe Coding" Challenge

I’m a Project Manager by day and a Full-Stack Dev (Node.js, React, React Native, Postgres) by night. However, Kotlin is my blind spot. I’ve been building this so far using the Android Studio AI Agent (Gemini).

It’s been a wild ride of "vibe coding," but as many of you know, AI agents can sometimes overcomplicate simple Android lifecycles or miss fundamental Kotlin best practices.

Why I’m Looking for You

I’m looking for a collaborator or mentor who actually knows the "Android Way." If you love Kotlin and believe in open-source privacy tools, I’d love to have you on board.

The Goal: A modern, stable, MIT-licensed version of Haven.

The Tech: CameraX, Sensor APIs, and eventually my own version of iohook.

The Vibe: Collaborative, open-source, and mission-driven.

What if nobody steps up?

I’ll keep pushing forward with the AI agent and my own research, improving it bit by bit. But having someone who can say, "Hey, don't do it that way, use a Flow here instead," would be a game-changer.

If you’re interested in privacy tech, security, or just want to help a fellow dev build something that matters, let’s connect!

GitHub/Repo Info: https://github.com/thamizh-root/neruppu/tree/main

License: MIT