Dianne Hackborn and Jason Parks are two of the architects on the Android engineering team, and in this podcast they talk to us about the Android platform from a technical perspective.
Dianne and Jason share a background at both Be and PalmSource, and talk about how that experience has been applied to Android. Other topics covered include:
- Some history behind the project
- The high level architecture of Android. For example, how Linux processes handle the VM and manage security (the VM doesn't handle it)
- Details on the Dalvik VM and how it is optimized for small devices
- The architecture: From Intents to Views to Permissions and more
- How XML is slow, but the tools convert the XML to a nicer format for you
- The tooling and steps for building an application on Android
- How so many objects have a URL, and how the environment is like a mini-SOA (Services across processes instead of across the network)
- Thoughts on how you program for small devices, and things to watch out for if you move from the desktop
- The control, or lack of control that you have over the application lifecycle
- "Everything you do drains the battery"
- The thread story: they exist, you don't have to deal with them if you don't want to, and the UI
- Using XMPP for messaging
You can download the episode directly, or subscribe to the show (click here for iTunes one-click subscribe).
