Jonathan Lalou's Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Google’

Stephan Linzner and Richard Hyndman, Google Android Developer Advocates, unravel enigmatic Android behaviors through interactive puzzles. Stephan, an automation aficionado and runner, teams with Richard, a 12-year mobile veteran from startups to operators, to probe component lifecycles, UI quirks, and KitKat novelties. Their session, blending polls and demos, spotlights content providers’ primacy, ViewStub pitfalls, and screen recording tools, arming developers with debugging savvy.

Android’s intricacies, they reveal, demand vigilance: from process spawning to WebView debugging. Live polls engage the audience, transforming head-scratchers into teachable moments.

Component Creation Order and Lifecycle

Stephan kicks off with a poll: which component initializes first post-process spawn? Hands favor activities, but content providers lead—crucial for data bootstrapping.

Richard demos service lifecycles, warning against onCreate leaks; broadcasts’ unregistered crashes underscore registration discipline.

UI Rendering Quirks and Optimizations

ViewStub inflation puzzles Stephan: pre-inflate for speed, but beware null children post-inflation. Richard explores ListView recycling, ensuring adapters populate recycled views correctly to avoid visual glitches.

These gotchas, they stress, demand profiler scrutiny for fluid UIs.

KitKat Innovations and Debugging Aids

KitKat’s screen recording, Richard unveils, captures high-res videos sans root—ideal for demos or Play Store assets. Stephan spotlights WebView debugging: Chrome DevTools inspect remote views, editing CSS live.

Monkey tool’s seeded crashes aid reproducible testing, simulating user chaos.

Interactive Polls and Community Insights

Polls gauge familiarity with overscan modes and transition animations, fostering engagement. The duo fields queries on SurfaceView security and WebView copies, clarifying limitations.

This collaborative format, they conclude, equips developers to conquer Android’s riddles.

Links:

• Stephan Linzner on LinkedIn
• Richard Hyndman on LinkedIn
• Google company website

Misko Hevery and Igor Minar, Google engineers and AngularJS co-leads, re-envisioned client-side development. Misko, an Agile coach with open-source contributions, partnered with Igor, focused on developer tools, to showcase AngularJS’s approach to simplifying web apps.

They posited extending the browser with declarative HTML and JavaScript, reducing code while enhancing readability. AngularJS bridges to future standards like web components and model-driven views.

Misko demonstrated data binding, where models sync with views automatically, eliminating manual DOM manipulation. Directives extend HTML, creating custom elements for reusability.

Igor highlighted dependency injection for modularity, and services for shared logic. Routing enables single-page apps, with controllers managing scopes.

They emphasized testability, with built-in mocking and end-to-end testing.

Declarative UI and Data Binding

Misko illustrated two-way binding: changes in models update views, and vice versa, without boilerplate. This declarative paradigm contrasts imperative jQuery-style coding.

Directives like ng-repeat generate lists dynamically, while filters format data.

Modularity and Dependency Management

Igor explained modules encapsulating functionality, injected via DI. This promotes clean, testable code.

Services, factories, and providers offer flexible creation patterns.

Routing and Application Structure

NgRoute handles navigation, loading templates and controllers. Scopes isolate data, with inheritance for hierarchy.

Testing and Future Alignment

Angular’s design facilitates unit and e2e tests, using Karma and Protractor.

They previewed alignment with web components, where directives become custom tags.

In Q&A, they compared to Knockout.js, noting Angular’s framework scope versus library focus.

Misko and Igor’s presentation framed AngularJS as transformative, anticipating browser evolutions while delivering immediate productivity.

Links:

• Misko Hevery on LinkedIn
• Igor Minar on LinkedIn
• Google company website

Ilya Grigorik, a Google web performance engineer and developer advocate, unveiled advanced capabilities of Chrome Developer Tools. Ilya, focused on accelerating the web, overwhelmed attendees with tips, dividing into inspection/debugging and performance analysis.

He encouraged hands-on exploration via online slides, emphasizing tools’ instrumentation for pinpointing bottlenecks.

Starting with basics, Ilya showed inspecting elements, modifying DOM/CSS live, and using console for JavaScript evaluation.

Advanced features included remote debugging for mobile, connecting devices to desktops for inspection.

Inspection and Debugging Essentials

Ilya demonstrated breakpoints on DOM changes, XHR requests, and events, pausing execution for analysis.

Color pickers, shadow DOM inspection, and computed styles aid UI debugging.

Console utilities like $0 for selected elements, querySelector, and table formatting enhance interactivity.

JavaScript Profiling and Optimization

CPU profilers capture call stacks, revealing hot spots. Ilya profiled loops, identifying inefficiencies.

Heap snapshots detect memory leaks by comparing allocations.

Source maps map minified code to originals, with pretty-printing for readability.

Network and Resource Analysis

Network panel details requests, with filters and timelines. Ilya explained columns like status, size, showing compression benefits.

WebSocket and SPDY inspectors provide low-level insights.

HAR exports enable sharing traces.

Timeline and Rendering Insights

Timeline records events, offering frame-by-frame analysis of layouts, paints.

Ilya used it to optimize animations, enabling GPU acceleration.

CSS selectors profile identifies slow rules.

Auditing and Best Practices

Audits suggest optimizations like minification, unused CSS removal.

Extensions customize tools further.

Low-Level Tracing and Customization

Chrome Tracing visualizes browser internals, instrumentable with console.time for custom metrics.

Ilya’s session equipped developers with powerful diagnostics for performant, debuggable applications.

Links:

• Ilya Grigorik on LinkedIn

Lecturer

Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine, a veteran of Sun Microsystems, currently serves as a Developer Relations lead at Google in Paris, assisting developers in achieving success. With over a decade at Sun and nearly two years at Oracle, he brings extensive experience in Java ecosystems and cloud technologies.

Abstract

Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine’s presentation examines Java’s evolution and its potential trajectory in cloud computing. Reflecting on historical shifts in technology, he critiques current limitations and advocates for advancements like multi-tenancy and resource management to ensure Java’s relevance. Through industry examples and forward-looking analysis, the talk underscores the need for adaptation to maintain Java’s position amid resource rationalization and emerging paradigms.

Java’s Maturation and the Cloud Imperative

Moussine-Pouchkine opens by recounting his transition from Sun Microsystems to Oracle and then Google, highlighting how each company has shaped computing history. At Sun, innovation abounded but market fit was inconsistent; Oracle emphasized acquisitions over novelty, straining community ties; Google prioritizes engineers, fostering rapid development.

He likens Java’s current state to emerging from adolescence, facing challenges in cloud environments where resource optimization is paramount. Drawing from his engineering school days with strict quotas on compilation and connection time, Alexis contrasts this with Java’s initial promise of freedom and flexibility. Early experiences with Linux provided boundless experimentation, mirroring Java’s liberating potential in 1997.

The speaker invokes historical predictions: IBM’s CEO allegedly foresaw a market for only five computers in 1943, possibly prescient regarding cloud providers. Bill Gates’ 640K memory quip and Greg Papadopoulos’ 2003 vision of five to seven massive global computers underscore consolidation trends. Papadopoulos envisioned entities like Google, eBay, Salesforce, Microsoft, Amazon, and a Chinese cloud, a perspective less radical today given web evolution.

Java’s centrality in tomorrow’s cloud is questioned. While present in many offerings, most implementations remain prototypes, circumventing Java’s constraints. The cloud demands shared resources and concentration of expertise, yet Java’s future here is uncertain, risking obsolescence like COBOL.

Challenges and Necessary Evolutions for Java in Multi-Tenant Environments

A core issue is Java’s adaptation to multi-tenancy, where multiple applications share a JVM without interference. Current JVMs lack robust isolation, leading to inefficiencies in cloud settings. Moussine-Pouchkine notes Java’s success in Android and Chrome, where processes are segregated, but enterprise demands shared instances for cost savings.

He critiques the stalled JSR-284 for resource management, essential for quotas and usage-based billing. Without these, Java lags in cloud viability. Examples like Google’s App Engine illustrate Java’s limitations: no threads, file system restrictions, and 30-second request limits, forcing workarounds.

Commercial solutions emerge: Waratek’s hypervisor on HotSpot, IBM’s J9 VM, and SAP’s container enable multi-tenancy. Yet, quotas remain crucial for responsible computing, akin to not overindulging at a buffet to ensure sustainability.

Java 9 priorities include modularity (Jigsaw), potentially aiding resource management. Cloud Foundry’s varying memory allocations by language highlight Java’s inefficiencies. Moussine-Pouchkine urges a “slider” for JVM scaling, from minimal to robust, without API fractures.

The community, pioneers in agile practices, continuous integration, and dependency management, must embrace modularity and quotas. Java 7 introduced dynamic languages; Java 8 tackles multicore with lambdas. Recent Oracle slides affirm multi-tenancy and resource management in Java 9 and beyond.

Implications for Sustainable and Credible Informatics

Moussine-Pouchkine advocates responsible informatics: quotas foster predictability, countering perceptions of IT as imprecise and costly. Developers, like artisans, must steward tools and design thoughtfully. Over-reliance on libraries (90% bloat) signals accumulated technical debt.

Quotas enhance credibility, enabling commitments and superior delivery. Java’s adaptive history positions it well, provided the community envisions it “caffeinated” – vibrant and adult – rather than “decaffeinated” and stagnant.

In essence, Java must address multi-tenancy and resources to thrive in consolidated clouds, avoiding the fate of outdated technologies.

Relevant Links and Hashtags

Links:

• Video of the lecture
• Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine on LinkedIn

Here is a short comparative of webbrowsers available on Windows Mobile 6.1. I used them on a Acer X960 on French VirginMobile network.

As a conclusion, what do I do?

• In most cases, I use Opera, for its speedness and tabs.
• When I need watch a video
  • my Acer X960 displays YouTube videos in a specific player
  • on other websites, I use SkyFire.
• For Google applications (GMail, Reader, Docs, etc.), I use SkyFire, too.