Google Developer Podcast: Android
December 5th, 2007 | Published in Google Android
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).