The Web
and Android

and what they can learn from eachother.

(according to aaronj1335@)
Originally presented on the 24^th of July, 2019
Press "s" for speaker notes

Who are you?

(this is a selfish topic)

Why care?

Computing platforms point to an underlying narrative
Platforms reflect the people building them
New platforms don't come along very frequently

I do want to share some of my motivation for this though
I do belive platforms like "Android", "iOS", "the web", .NET, Unity, etc have a huge impact on our lives.
Platforms are evidence of a narrative -- some group won, some group lost, and we're subject to the priorities of the winners.
Platforms are a reflection: software engineers are expensive → they buy nice phones → they tend to ignore the low-end device experience → the experience on low-end devices is endemically worse.
New platforms don't happen often (especially if defined by a significant number of users). I believe they tend to correspond to big paradigm shifts.

(I'm sorry for saying "paradigm shift")

Why care?

Computing platforms point to an underlying narrative
Platforms reflect the people building them
New platforms don't come along very frequently
Computing platforms govern significant parts of our lives

Especialy as software engineers and content makers.
There was a time where you could publish an Android app, and the targetApi contract guaranteed it would keep working in future Android versions.
That is effectively no longer true past a couple years.
Who made that decision? Was that made for the benefit of app developers? Users? Platform owners?
There was a time when there were no technical limitations to downloading any content on the web.
Now there is a standard process for locking that down
Once again, who made that decision? Was it for users? Content makers? Browser vendors?
So I think these are important to understand the same way it's important to understand how your governement works.
Going back to an earlier point, we should understand who is benefitting.

Someone is deciding how these platforms will work.

Similarities

Both are concerned with reach
Both are sanctimonious

There's a lot we could say here, but we'll focus on similarities that don't hold in other big platforms.
I think it's really cool how diverse these platforms are. THERE'S A LOT OF WORK TO BE DONE, but if you think about how each have enabled access for so many, I think it's something to take pride in.
Related to that: both have this sanctimonious chip on their shoulder, and frequently seem to overstate their importance.
The web talks about being this "open", democratizing force, when really we all know humanity's problems need something more than hyper text to fix.
Similarly, has anyone heard Android people talk about "church and state"?

Differences

#1 Origins

The web started as a way to share research
Android started as a way to make better mobile software

Sir Tim Berners Lee was working at CERN, a European nuclear research facility, and he invented the web for sharing research information.
Andy Rubin talked about Android as a way to make smarter mobile devices.
While people weren't using the word "apps" initially, it was definitely about expanding the possibilities of software applications, given a powerful device you carried everywhere with you.
I think we still see echoes of these origins today.
Can anybody give examples?
Web search is still better than mobile app indexing
On the other hand, how many of us use a mobile web app for chat?

#2 What do we call content makers?

Each platform talks about content makers (newspapers, social media influencers, Netflix, etc) by different (telling) names.
Web standards refer to them as "authors"
Android docs refer to them as "publishers"

#3 What's the authority?

The web: DNS + CA
Android: OEM + app store

What can the web learn from Android?

#1 List views are the only layout that matters.

It's the most important layout for mobile. For example, 80% of the apps on my home screen start with a list view. How many on yours?
Thing is, list views are hard. Android had to rewrite theirs, but not before Facebook went to a ton of trouble authoring their own..
Any viable mobile platform should make this easy on developers.
The web actually has pretty advanced layout tools (CSS flex, grid), but there's still no standard way to do an efficient list view.

#2 You still need shared memory multi-threading.

#3 Battery matters.

In the past, the web didn't drain battery because it didn't really do stuff in the background or work offline.
As the web tries to make proper mobile apps (messaging apps, social media feeds, etc), it needs to get better at background and offline.
Android not only has WorkManager, its 3^rd iteration of a battery-saving background scheduler, it's surfacing battery consumption to the user via settings and system tray notifications.
The web isn't really having these discussions.

What can Android learn from the web?

#1 Lower the barrier to entry.

#2 Deliver apps incrementally.

Average web page is 10% average Android app.
Web has super flexible options for loading code incrementally, sharing code across domains, and caching subsets.
Android app bundles seem to be the first "official" means for this. Advanced apps (i.e. Google Play services, Facebook, etc) have their own systems for this.
Embedding webviews for shared logic is common (even in big apps!).
Tooling is bad everywhere though. Hell is another platform's build system.

The Web
and Android

and what they can learn from eachother.

Who are you?

(this is a selfish topic)

Why care?

Why care?

Someone is deciding how these platforms will work.

Similarities

Differences

#1 Origins

#2 What do we call content makers?

#3 What's the authority?

What can the web learn from Android?

#1 List views are the only layout that matters.

#2 You still need shared memory multi-threading.

#3 Battery matters.

What can Android learn from the web?

#1 Lower the barrier to entry.

#2 Deliver apps incrementally.

#3 Make it async, not concurrent.

#4 Experiment with DX more.

The web and Android are the best platforms ever (objectively)

There's still a lot they could learn from eachother.

Let's consider this and participate actively in these platforms.

Thanks!

The Web and Android

and what they can learn from eachother.

Who are you?

(this is a selfish topic)

Why care?

Why care?

Someone is deciding how these platforms will work.

Similarities

Differences

#1 Origins

#2 What do we call content makers?

#3 What's the authority?

What can the web learn from Android?

#1 List views are the only layout that matters.

#2 You still need shared memory multi-threading.

#3 Battery matters.

What can Android learn from the web?

#1 Lower the barrier to entry.

#2 Deliver apps incrementally.

#3 Make it async, not concurrent.

#4 Experiment with DX more.

The web and Android are the best platforms ever (objectively)

There's still a lot they could learn from eachother.

Let's consider this and participate actively in these platforms.

Thanks!

The Web
and Android