by Colin Lee | at MinneBar 13 | 3:00 – 3:50 in Zeke Landres | View Schedule
This session will explore some of the newer and more interesting solutions to developing apps across a wide array of devices.
You've all heard about Facebook's React Native, but what about the alternatives? Why are we still coding in Javascript?!
We'll take an introductory dive into Flutter, Google's newest multi-platform app framework for Android and iOS.
Flutter is essentially a C++ native game engine which renders UI elements which look exactly like native app widgets. It's based upon the language Dart, but should be immediately familiar to most developers using modern languages. The only difference between an Android Flutter app and an iOS Flutter app is a single constant.
I will also explain my experience building a game across Android, iOS, web, server, and desktop using only Kotlin code and Kotlin build scripts.
Kotlin is a newer programming language created by JetBrains, the company that made the most popular Integrated Development Environments among software developers.
Often compared to Swift and of about the same age, Kotlin has become Google's recommended language for Android development. It's also becoming the recommended language by Pivotal for Spring web service development.
The core Kotlin team has recently unveiled massively cross-platform features which I'll show off. This allows you to run Kotlin code on virtually any device, even Raspberry Pis, and to share similar code between devices.
Colin is an experienced software engineer specializing in Android development. He worked for Mozilla on the Firefox for Android rewrite. He has worked for many successful companies in the past fifteen years, including Amazon, Flipgrid (acquired by Microsoft), Cray, Pearson VUE, and When I Work. He runs the Twin Cities Kotlin User Group in his spare time. He now works full-time for Meetup and enjoys traveling the world during their generous paid time off.
He has been programming since he learned BASIC on the TRS-80 computer in his parents' basement at age six. He has been writing Android apps since soon after the first Android phone launched and has done so professionally since the last space shuttle landed. In that time, he's probably been pitched every silly app idea and been offered a percent stake in the zero dollars most actually earned.
