Work

Skills and Tools

All the skills and tools I've used in my work. And how I think about them.

I start my professional career as a full-stack developer in Vietnam from 4 years ago. Most of my work is focused on mobile and back-end development.

Even though using different technologies, I always try to know the best practices and how does it work. That way, I can make my code clean and easy to understand.

Android

For me Android development is a good way to start my career. I've been using it for 4 years and I'm really comfortable with it.

  • Kotlin is my go-to language for Android development.
  • MVVM and MVI are my favorite architecture patterns.
  • Couroutines are my favorite way to handle asynchronous tasks.
  • Hilt is my favorite dependency injection framework.
  • MAD Skills (Modern Android Development) are the best practices for Android development.

Compose UI vs XML UI

  • Compose UI is the future of Android development. It's more powerful and easier to use than XML UI.
  • When using Compose, cause of its declarative nature, it's easier to understand and maintain the code. You can feel like you are writing with React or Flutter and it's really cool.
  • But for now, Compose still not good for list and grid views, RecyclerView is still the best choice for that. Learn more about that at a paper A Comparative Analysis of Jetpack Compose and XML Views.

Kotlin functional programming

  • Almost Android developers are using Kotlin for their projects. But not all of them are using Kotlin functional programming. They still use Java-like code in Kotlin. OOP is good, but in some cases, functional programming is better.
  • With Kotlin functional programming, you can write more concise and readable code. You can use higher-order functions, lambda expressions, and extension functions to make your code more powerful and easier to understand.

iOS

iOS development is a new thing for me. I've been using it for 2 years and I'm still learning it. But I'm really excited about it.

  • Swift is my go-to language for iOS development.
  • SwiftUI is my favorite way to build UI.
  • Combine is my favorite way to handle asynchronous tasks.
  • MVVM-C is my favorite architecture pattern.

SwiftUI vs UIKit

  • SwiftUI is the future of iOS development. It's more powerful and easier to use than UIKit. It's like Compose UI for Android.
  • I dont have much experience with UIKit, but I know that SwiftUI is more powerful and easier to use than UIKit. You can build your UI with less code and it's really cool. But in some cases, you still need to use UIKit and then mapping it to SwiftUI use UIViewRepresentable or UIViewControllerRepresentable.

Architect and Clean Code

  • Don't like Android, iOS development don't have a specific architecture pattern like MVVM or MVI and best practices like MAD Skills. I always try to look for the best practices and how does it work. Then I can manually apply it to my projects.

Backend

My top priority thing in backend development is architecture and design. I'm reading a lot of books and articles about it and join some group to see how are they doing.

  • Go is my favorite language for backend development. But I also use Node.js and Python for some projects.
  • Always try to use microservices with rGPC or Queue for communication between services.
  • Always use Docker and Kubernetes for deployment.

Design patterns

Design patterns are the best practices for software development. I always try to learn and apply them to my projects. Here are some design patterns that I'm using:

Singleton

  • Singleton is a creational design pattern that lets you ensure that a class has only one instance, while providing a global access point to this instance.
  • My experience when using Singleton is it have some problems with multithreading. Need to carefully handle it, always use synchronized keyword when accessing the instance.

Detail and Summary

I love to learn new things and apply them to my projects. Best practices and design patterns are the things that I always try to learn and apply. I hope that I can learn more and more and become a better developer.