Android Platform @ Reddit. Passion for all things Android especially in emerging technologies like Anvil and Jetpack Compose. Outside of work I enjoy spending time with my wife and our dog, Violet, as well as cycling and weightlifting.
Drew Heavner
Staff Software Engineer @ Reddit
Plug and Play: Power Up DevX with Android Studio Plugins
For most companies, developer tooling investments often lag behind direct user-facing codebase improvements. However, as a company grows, more engineers begin to contribute and the codebase gets more complex and mature, tooling becomes an essential part of maintaining and improving the developer experience at scale. Early tooling efforts often evolve into disparate collections of multilingual scripts, but what happens when we treat tooling and infra as a proper software project just like we would production code? Let’s explore how Reddit has made tooling a first-class citizen within our codebase by leveraging custom IntelliJ IDE Plugins to improve the developer experience and how your team can apply these concepts and learnings to your own projects.
Key Takeaways:
1. What is an IntelliJ Plugin and how can it help you build tooling to level-up your developer experience?
2. What kinds of problems can IntelliJ plug-ins help solve, with Reddit-specific examples:
a. Use Case: Using plugins to improve developer onboarding
b. Use Case: Using plugins to keep developers informed and up-to-date
c. Use Case: Using plugins to accelerate large migrations
d. Use Case: Using plugins to reinforce opinionated design patterns
3. What are some other opportunities for plug-ins and how to get started writing your own or leveraging those from others