How Meta Ported Million Lines of Android Code from Java to Kotlin
In order to maximize the benefits brought by Kotlin in terms of productivity and safety, Meta engineers have been hard at work to translate their 10 million line Android codebase from Java into Kotlin. One year into this process, they have ported approximately half of their codebase and developed a specific tool, Kotlinator, to automate the process as much as possible.
Flutter 3.27 Promotes New Rendering Engine Impeller, Improves iOS and Material Widgets, and More
Flutter 3.27, brings a wealth of changes, including better adherence to Apple’s UI Guidelines thanks to a number of improved Cupertino widgets, new features for CarouselView, list rows and columns, ModalRoutes transitions, and so on. Furthermore, the new release makes the Impeller rendering engine the default, with improved performance, instrumentation support, concurrency support, and more.
Improving Threads' iOS Performance at Meta
An app’s performance is key to make users want to use it, say Meta engineers Dave LaMacchia and Jason Patterson. This includes making it lightning-fast, battery-efficient, and reliable across a range of devices and connectivity conditions. In a recent article, they recounted their experience with the Threads app.
Android Studio Ladybug Update Adds Gemini Support, New Debugging Features, and More
In its recent update to Android Studio Ladybug (2024.2.2), Google has added new Gemini Code Transforms to modify, refactor, or create code, debugging and testing tools, and developer experience improvements. Additionally, the IDE adopts the latest IntelliJ 2024.2 platform release.
Apple New In-App Purchases API for Creator Platforms and Large Catalogs
Apple’s new Advanced Commerce API provides iOS developers more flexibility to dynamically manage large content catalogs, creator experiences, and subscriptions with optional add-ons, such as premium features. For a developer to be allowed to use the new API, they must request access to Apple.