Development

Traditionally, you were using a listview to display several homogeneous elements in you Android app. However, this view is now deprecated. Android now offers an alternative, which aims to increase performance by only loading those elements, that are currently rendered on-screen: the RecyclerView. This article shows you how to get started with the RecyclerView. To make things a bit more interesting, we will be using Kotlin instead of Java. You can set up an Android project for Kotlin by simply clicking the checkbox for Kotlin support in the new project wizard. ...

Most of the built-in operators that are available in C# can be redefined. In todays article, I’ll be showing you how you can redefine operators to match your custom classes. Additionally, I’ll cover which operators actually can be overwritten. Redefining Operators To create custom functionality for operators in combination with your own classes, you’ll simply need to create methods matching a specific pattern. These methods require the usage of the keyword operator, followed by the actual operator you’ll want to overwrite. ...

Are you one of the people who are easily intimidated by complicated-looking things? I felt a little bit like that when I saw lambda expressions for the first time. But let me tell you this: they really only look scary on the very first look. This article covers the basics of using lambda expressions and should be seen as quick introduction rather than extensive documentation. What are Lambda Expressions? Lambda expressions somehow belong to the anonymous methods. However, they are not called expression instead of method for nothing. They are therefore only similar, not identical. Under a certain circumstance, i. e. the assignment of a delegate, they can be used identically. ...

Xamarin utilizes the Android Debug Bridge (ADB) for debugging on physical devices, which are usually connected over usb. While this feature definitely is useful, it would sometimes be more practical if you could do this over WIFI instead. Luckily, that is possible! You can simple switch between using USB and TCP/IP for debugging. To get started, you need to connect your device via USB to the computer you’re debugging from. I’m using Windows, so the commands I’ll execute the following commands from the commandline (which runs as an administrator), but since they are adb commands, they should be the same on Linux or macOS. ...

In my introductory post on git, I told you that git uses three areas to track changes. Well, maybe I lied to you in this case. There are actually four areas available and I will cover this fourth area in todays post. The fourth area is called Stash. Basically, it works like a clipboard to which you can save current changes. Concepts of the Stash … Imagine the following scenario: You are working on a change. In the middle of your work you remember that you also wanted to do something else. This other change is important and should be handled immediately. However, it cannot be implemented with the uncomitted changes you are currently working on. In short, you need the status of the last commit, but you don’t want to discard your current changes and you also can’t commit them yet. ...