Long-answer questions¶
Interest in App Inventor¶
I have a very special appreciation to App Inventor because it was the platform where I learned programming. At the age of 13, I discovered this platform as I had an idea for a project, and it was the moment I realized I wanted to study Computer Science.
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Interest in introductory programming¶
In my class, this is the first year of programming for most students. And they are facing difficulties when trying to abstract to understand how it works. However, some others have already programmed using Scratch, and they are finding many fewer obstacles. Blocks-based languages help to understand how programming works.
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Proposed summer project¶
Enhancing the experience of App Inventor developers with Google Play¶
Related Issue: Investigate Android App Bundles · Issue #1903 · mit-cml/appinventor-sources
Each operating system has its own "packages" that allow installing
different applications to extend the features in the device. Android is not
an exception, and their package type is the .apk file type (Android
Application Package). This file has been present in Android since the
very beginnings, allowing the development of several applications.
And App Inventor has the ability to build the app projects into those .apk
files, as it is an Android app creator.
Google, as the owner of Android, always tries to optimize its environment by
protecting the users and enhancing the development ecosystem, among other
things. So, they wanted to make a change.
In Google I/O 20181, Google introduced the .aab file format (Android
App Bundle). This new format is being used by Google Play Store, and
Google is encouraging everyone to use it when distributing apps.
This project proposal intends to bring the option of exporting app projects in
MIT App Inventor as .aab files, which make their distribution more straightforward
in Google Play Store. Moreover, if App Inventor had support for .aab files, it
would be possible to make use of the App Signing by Google Play.
Right now, users get warnings in the Play Console that their app is unoptimized
because of using the .apk file format, and they cannot enable App Signing
because .apk files are already signed by MIT App Inventor default keystore's.
Experience with the development tools¶
Java¶
I have more than 4 years of Java experience and object-oriented programming
and, in my opinion, a clean code style apt for open-source projects.
Although I have never started a public Java project, I have a very strong Java
background experience. As part of Kodular team, which
is based in MIT App Inventor, we use Java for Kodular Creator. I have developed
some of the components for the platform (like the Cryptography component) and
modified some things like the Compiler to implement full multi-dex support
(right now App Inventor just supports two different dexes) and integration with
Google Play libraries. I have a solid knowledge of ant and maven. Here
is a screenshot of the changes made to Kodular Creator by me:
Also, now I am working in a project for Civil Defense which consists of a Dashboard to manage all ops and the logistics, and I am using Spring Boot for the backend. The work to be done also includes a Telegram bot that acts as another interface for the database, written in pure Java.
Android development with the Java SDK¶
Continuing with contributions to both Kodular and MIT App Inventor, I have more than 3 years of experience after working with the Android SDK in both components and buildserver. However, the area I am more skillfully is at buildserver. I have integrated ProGuard to obfuscate the AndroidRuntime.jar in both extensions and web buildserver, developed the auto multidex system (which removes the 65535 classes limit), added the option to use a custom package name in apps and some other minor improvements.
Git/Github¶
I have been using Git for quite a long time (my account was created in May 2016).
I know how useful the Git Version Control is for very large projects, being able to
keep track of all changes and the tree of branches.
The best way to demonstrate my knowledge about git is by linking my Github profile
so you could check it at any time: github.com/barreeeiroo.
Please note that most of the repositories I work at are in organizations.
Google Web Toolkit¶
My only contact with the Google Web Toolkit framework is the development of
Kodular. I have a full understanding of how GWT works internally, and how
dynamic HTML objects are generated for the user interface. It helped me to
understand how user-interface frameworks work, and now I am experimenting with
a few others, like Angular.
Also, my experience after working with App Inventor made me to understand with
some details how each module works. So working in the user interface part is a
pretty uncomplicated task, as I think it is needed to, at least, know a bit of
every other module.
Google App Engine¶
At Kodular, I manage the servers infrastructure, so I have to know how Google App
Engine works to do it. I perfectly know how App Inventor stores all the data in
the respective cloud services, and all files are being generated in order to be used
for both production and development.
An example of work in this field is that I have added full HTTPS support for Kodular
time ago already, which required configuration in the servers.
Experience with teams, online developer communities, and large code bases¶
StackOverflow Profile: /users/6626193
Collaboration is a vital part of software development. The most successful projects
have tons of developers who contribute to the core. And so is MIT App Inventor.
I have already contributed to the MIT App Inventor sources project, which has an
impressively large code base (more than 300,000 lines of code). I had to learn how
to work with other developers to standardize contributions, following guidelines to
ease future work. At Kodular, we also have our own development workflow to avoid pushing
corrupted changes and a code-review system (like App Inventor too).
Also, I contributed to other projects like some Discourse
plugins to add some features. I am an active member in the Telegram bots community
(specially the Lua, Python and Java ones), and contributed since years ago to several
bots. Right now, one of my bots is used to moderate groups, and has more than 40,000
different groups in its database.