Last Week in Mobile: It's All About Kotlin

No shortage of Kotlin coverage! That's what I picked up from my week's browsing of mobile articles. Everyone's talking about it. Makes you wonder what news can come out of WWDC to even up the books again.

iOS 

Tables are at the root of most apps that we create, but how many times has your table view gone out of control? This tutorial on How to Build a Table View With Multiple Cell Types is essential reading, and promises that you won’t get lost in spaghetti code. 

Kotlin is (rightly) getting attention from Swift developers. After all, the languages are quite similar. One developer asks "Is This A Whole New Era in Mobile Development?”

There’s a useful Playground available that you can check what’s new in Swift 4. Make sure to check out this accompanying article too.

Using some unofficial Swift flags, you can really speed up the compiler and auto-completion. Learn how here.

Some projects to check out: 

• GoogleReporter: Easily integrate your app with Google Analytics. 
• SwiftKotlin: A tool to convert Swift code to Kotlin. 
• MotionBook: Awesome iOS UI/UIX animation book.

Finally, this is on Twitter account that is impossible to look at without laughing - @realbadiostips.

Android

Google have announced the winners of the 2017 Play Awards. If you’re looking for inspiration into what Google regards as a high-quality app, you should look no further than the winners list.

The big news from Google I/O was Kotlin’s emergence as an officially support Android app development language. As you can imagine, there’s been a lot written about it from opinion pieces like, The Language That Stole Android Developer’s Hearts, to guides such as A Complete Guide to Learn Kotlin for Android Development and articles that convince Why You Should Totally Switch to Kotlin. Finally, make sure to check out the Kotlin Komparisons series which takes a feature implemented in Java and provides a Kotlin equivalent, along with this excellent Java to Kotlin Cheatsheet.

Since it’s introduction last year, ConstraintLayout has become every developer’s favorite way to organize screens. This article shows how you can create beautiful animations using ConstraintLayout. 

App architecture is a touchy subject for some. Here’s one developer’s take on Architecture Components. If you’re unsure of whether you want to go with MVP or MVVM, this is an article that might help you work it all out. 

Speaking of architecture components, here’s how Room can solve issues around your SQLite database.

Some projects to check out:

• android-architecture-components: A collection of samples using the Architecture Components 
• ShimmerLayout: Memory efficient shimmering effect for Android applications by Supercharge
• hypertrack-live-android: Build live location sharing in your app 

General 

A real in-depth look into Great Mobile Apps & Why They’re Successful could give you the blueprint you need to become the next big thing.

Burnout is a serious issue for developers, and it’s not always so obvious what causes it. In Recovering From Burnout you’ll get a better insight into the causes, and how to get out of it. 

This second part into the story of the Dropbox brand, Illustrating a More Human Brand is worth a read for those looking to find their identity.