003: The RxJava show with Dan Lew (Part 1)

Rx Mascot

In this episode of Fragmented, Donn and Kaushik interview Dan Lew – druid of RxJava & RxAndroid! In part 1 of this 2 part series, we find out more about the one they call Dan Lew. We ask Dan how he started off as a developer, how he stays on top of development, where he draws inspiration from for amazing Android development and much more. We then begin disarming the glorious beast that is RxJava touching upon it’s benefits and begin discussion of some common operators.

Dan’s open source contributions:

Staying on top of Android Development:

Dan’s  favorite apps:

Android Games that Dan plays

Working Remotely:

Getting started with  RxJava:

Rx

  • onizuka89

    This is the first time I have heard about RxJava, and while I’m not sure what’s so wonderful about it, your enthusiasm makes me want to look into it. So I’ll guess be looking at Dan’s posts about it later today.

    • http://www.donnfelker.com/ Donn Felker

      I’m glad to hear it. It’s a great framework. Thanks for listening.

  • http://blog.kaush.co/ Kaushik Gopal

    the payoff in learning RxJava is DEFINITELY worth it!

  • Oleg Makarov

    Hello! Thanks for a podcast! It’s interesting and very useful. Also, it’s great to hear Dan in your podcast.
    I’m looking at RxJava for some time for now. The main question I have: how to re-subscribe to observables after something like device rotation? Or, maybe, I’m just using Rx in a wrong way?

    • Dan Lew

      First, the question is whether you need it to survive. If it’s something like a click listener, then the answer is no – just recreate a new observable/subscription on each configuration change.

      There are common cases where you *do* want it to survive. A prime example is a network request – you only want to execute it once, even if the user rotates the screen.

      There’s two things you have to do in that case:

      1. The Observable has to live somewhere outside of the Activity’s lifecycle. Obviously, it cannot (itself) be lost during configuration change.

      2. Your Observable must continue operating and cache its results regardless of whether anyone is subscribed to it. You can use either the replay() or cache() operator to get this effect.

      • Oleg Makarov

        Thanks for explanation, it helps a lot )

  • chiefconcern

    This podcast has pointed me in direction of many valuable resources. Keep up the good work gents!

    • http://www.donnfelker.com/ Donn Felker

      Thanks a bunch!

  • Дмитрий Филюстин

    Hype Kotlin in the future maybe? Its functional mechanisms should play well with RxJava. I’m personally excited about Kotlin release which is scheduled for this summer.

    • http://www.donnfelker.com/ Donn Felker

      I think Kotlin is exciting, but the thing is – most of my clients have no interest in it. They want their apps written in native Java so they can easily find Android Developers that know the platform and can hit the ground running. That’s the problem with most of the other languages that compile down to native. Sad, but true.

  • http://doridori.co.uk Dorian Cussen

    Another great episode :) many thanks