Ahmed Tikiwa is a seasoned full-stack developer with over 8 years of experience and possesses a strong passion for developing world-class applications that can help make a difference. He has experience in both frontend and backend systems, where he has built enterprise solutions for major telecommunication companies. He is currently a Senior Software Engineer and Android Tech Lead at Luno, GDG Cape Town Co-organizer, and an official contributor to Google Developers Dev Library.
Ahmed Tikiwa
Senior Software Engineer & Android Tech Lead at Luno
From XML to Compose, my journey of transforming an existing large app to Jetpack Compose
After Jetpack Compose was finally released, creators of new Android apps were now equipped with a tool that will help them easily write apps using the new declarative approach.
The journey is not easy for developers who already have large apps that use the imperative, XML-based approach and want to convert it to Jetpack Compose. This talk will aim to answer the question: should you migrate an existing code base to Jetpack Compose? Is it worth it? Are there any benefits to migrating an existing app or should one rather write a Jetpack Compose app from scratch? This talk will be based on my experience of migrating a large real-world production project, an open-source app I developed in 2015. In this brand new, special talk for Droidcon New York, I will highlight that journey in great detail going through all the screens migrated and how that was done, showing the various resources used, and tools available to make the migration a possibility. The talk will also outline the learnings during this migration, the process as well as the pitfalls to avoid.