This Week in Mobile: Exploring MLKit and Biometrics on iOS

After the excitement of Google I/O we're in a holding pattern for WWDC. Still, there's lots to talk about with the libraries and frameworks we already have! 

Android 

I’d highly recommend following Joe Birch’s latest series, Exploring Firebase MLKit on Android which kicks off with an introduction to MLKit

This is pretty neat - Helium: A Lightweight MVP Framework for Android, written 100% in Kotlin, it looks like it can really help you create some genuinely clean code. 

If you’ve been holding out on Kotlin, Google I/O will have made it clear that the language is the future of Android, so it’s time to get stuck in. There’s a free Udacity course, Kotlin Bootcamp, that will make the transition a little easier for you.

Sticking with Kotlin, here is a compilation of Best Practices for Unit Testing in Kotlin. 

Here’s a rundown of Everything New in the Google Play Console as announced at this year’s Google I/O

Google Design have a nice article looking at the Evolution of Android Homescreen and Navigation showing how things have changed over the last ten years. 

Some projects to check out: 

• UETool: Show/edit any view’s attributions on the screen 
• Stark: Hot-fix framework for Android. It supports swapping new implementations of classes without restarting a running app. 

iOS 

Touch ID and Face ID on iOS goes beyond the basic examples that the official docs provide, and gives a real in-depth look into how both systems work.

This article uses a solid example showing How To Share Code Between Similar iOS Apps by using targets wisely. While it’s something we all aim for, it’s typically something that every large scale project fails at. 

Here’s an interesting look at Extending Your Modules Using a Plugin Architecture. While it may sound like overkill initially, this is a very neat way to create a proper architecture for modular apps.

Essential reading for most developers, here’s How to Use Regular Expressions in Swift. 

NSAttributedString in Swift examples how to deal with attributed strings and theme your app using SwiftRichString 2 

Some projects to check out: 

• ClassicKit: A collection of classic-style UI components for iOS
• CardParts: Reactive, card-based UI framework build on UIKit 
• SwiftEntryKit: Banner presenter library for IOS. It can be used to easily display pop-ups and notification-like views within your apps 
• CloudKitCodable: An encoder and decoder for CKRecord

General 

Airbnb has become one of the golden examples of startups growing from nothing. See if you can pick up any tips from How to Scale a Magical Experience: 4 Lessons for Airbnb’s Brian Chesky. 

Techtion is a repository of questions that will help you get prepared for any technical interview involving iOS, Android, Java, JavaScript, PHP or Python. 

Principles for Success is an animated mini-series adventure that you can watch in just 30 minutes. It’s time well spent, as it will lead you to your own principles to make better work and life decisions.

The Secret Authority of Coders highlights how best laid plans will often fail, because no matter what you create it depends on the motivation of your development team. So maybe these 7 Tips to Successfully Micromanage Programmers are needed?