February 2021 Summaries

Danielle Emma Vass is a Senior Software Engineer at Bitrise, specializing in Android development. She has a background in mobile programming and teaching coding skills to underrepresented groups through her work with Codebar Mobile. Danielle's journey into tech was not traditional, starting with psychology but discovering her passion for computing and eventually pursuing a career in engineering. She shares her experiences as a woman in the tech industry, including challenges she faced early on, such as being placed in an HR role instead of engineering, and how these experiences shaped her approach to her career. Danielle values collaboration, learning from others, and finding supportive communities, which led her to work at Bitrise where she can collaborate with other engineers and contribute to the development of the Trace SDK for mobile platforms. She emphasizes the importance of finding one's people and being stubborn when needed in pursuing a career in tech.

Releasing with speed and confidence is made possible by mobile release trains that introduce a quicker release model and faster mobile cycles, aligning distributed development teams and making them more efficient regardless of their size. Companies such as Lyft, Soundcloud, and Skyscanner leverage this approach to drive better planning, increased release efficiency, less risk, and improved visual feedback on the status of builds. The methodology involves working in two-week intervals, which allows for testing and preparation of updates, reducing the risk of adding new changes that don't work and making it easier to address issues. A release manager is responsible for smooth, consistent rollouts, and feature flags can be used to increase release confidence and staged rollouts. Having a fixed schedule also gives flexibility when unexpected issues arise, allowing for additional flexibility in multi-platform releases. Adopting a continuous integration tool is vital for speed and automation, ensuring that the master branch is always deployable with features, code contributions, and devices to release for.

You can use JShell with Bitrise's Script step, making it a versatile option for developers. Setting up JShell involves specifying the path to the `jshell` binary in the Script step's configuration. However, this requires switching to a newer JDK version, which may be cumbersome. Another approach is to compile and run Java code directly from your CI script files, either by compiling them beforehand or using the new feature of running Java files with one command in Java 11. For Kotlin users, adding Kotlin code to their library modules can also be done, although it requires manual installation. Both JShell and compiled scripts have limitations, such as sensitivity to package/path refactoring. Ultimately, the choice between JShell, Java, or Kotlin depends on individual project needs and developer preferences. Bitrise could improve its Script step by pre-installing languages like Kotlin and simplifying the configuration process.

Flutter has helped Nubank scale its app at a hyper-growth fintech company by providing an excellent developer experience, long-term viability, and consistency across platforms. The team prioritized factors such as developer experience, long-term viability, no platform specialization, incremental abstraction cost, and non-linear abstraction risk before deciding on Flutter. With Flutter's testing capabilities, hot reload features, robust official documentation, and stable API, the team was able to rapidly ship high-quality apps and adopt a culture of continuous innovation. The migration process involved creating tooling and support for app copy and translations, adapting build, testing, and continuous deployment pipelines, and providing widespread training to teams. Despite some challenges, Flutter has significantly reduced the barrier to new engineers contributing to the app, improved efficiency, and enabled the team to launch new products quickly.