mDevCamp 2024 Through the eyes of our Android developers

This was our 6th year participating in mDevCamp. While the lectures were interesting, we found this year's event to be somewhat weaker compared to previous years. Nevertheless, there were still some presentations worth seeing.

The first lecture we attended was Compose-View Interop in Practice by István Juhos. It highlighted some fascinating aspects of transitioning from a view-based architecture to Compose.

Next, we watched Refactoring and Test Fakes: Crafting Resilient Code with Confidence by Ashley Davies, whom we've seen at mDevCamp several times before. The lecture was full of useful advice and tips, but it lacked a cohesive story to tie these pieces of advice together into a unified presentation.

The most interesting lecture for me was The Best Screenshot Testing Tactics for Android Developers in 2024 by David Bilík. It addressed the challenges we need to overcome to effectively use screenshot testing for applications. The lecture offered interesting insights and highlighted the pitfalls of this testing method.

The lecture QA of a Programming Language?! K2 Stabilisation Journey by Liliia Abdulina was a bit of a disappointment. It was difficult to understand and didn’t bring many interesting information.

A highly anticipated lecture was Build Apps for iOS, Android & Desktop in 100% Kotlin With Compose Multiplatform by Sebastian Aigner and Márton Braun. A lot of people attended, which was a bit underestimated by the organizers and some had to sit on the floor. It was evident that these two had put in a lot of effort, and they handled live coding flawlessly, which is not always a given (even with the Android emulator freezing twice).

Petr Zvoníček from Spotify presented Two Platforms, Same Building Blocks, showing us the best ways to synchronize two mobile platforms.

The last lecture we attended was An Introduction to Cross Platform Games with Flutter & Flame by Lukáš Klingsbo. He introduced us to a game engine that is still not ready for production games.

During the panel discussion, interesting questions about the future direction of technological development for mobile devices were discussed. Unfortunately, Petr Mára could not participate due to an accident.

The closing lightning talks, which used to be the highlight of the conference, were less impressive this year. Overall, the conference was well-organized with interesting content, but we missed some soft skills lectures.

mDevCamp 2024 provided us with numerous valuable insights and opportunities to meet industry experts. The lectures were interesting, but we rated this year's event slightly lower compared to previous years. We are already looking forward to next year's event and the new developments it will bring.