Build Propulsion Lab at UberConf 2023: Ken Kousen
00:00 👋 Baruch introduces a new episode of Build Propulsion Lab at UberConf 2023, expressing excitement and uncertainty, and discusses the goal of establishing a unique and recognizable catchphrase.
01:05 🚀 The Build Propulsion Lab at UberConf 2023 aims to improve build times by continuously improving and converting everything to Kotlin. Builds tend to be pretty good and take around 5 minutes or less for medium-sized Android projects, but open-source projects can take longer. Ken discusses the length of build times, including tests, and mentions that in the case of Android builds without tests, they don't do anything productive during the five minutes.
05:13 📢 Baruch highlights the importance of networking at UberConf and mentions their packed schedule of talks, while also mentioning the limited accessibility and usage restrictions of Facebook's llama 2 open-source release. Facebook released their llama 2 version open source, but it is not accessible to everyone and there are restrictions on usage.
08:44 🎙️ Ken covers various topics including machine learning, AI for Java developers, JUnit 5, Mockito, Modern Java features, and upcoming features in Java 21, while also discussing activity engineering and the differences between Groovy and Kotlin DSL in Gradle. Basic file manipulation tasks can be done in Gradle using either the Groovy or Kotlin DSL, with the Kotlin DSL being the default, but there are differences between the two and Ken made a mistake by relying on an AI assistant to convert code from Groovy to Kotlin.
12:02 📝 Developer Productivity Engineering (DPE) focuses on faster feedback, eliminating flaky tests, and smart IDEs, not just coffee machines or programming languages, and it relates to productivity in software engineering.
15:58 🔍 Ken questions the term "development engineering" and suggests it should be integrated into Gradle, emphasizing the significance of engineering in developer productivity and the necessity to adapt to change.
18:40 📺 Ken discusses their newsletter "Tales from the jar side" and how they started a YouTube channel to read the newsletter to viewers who prefer watching videos over reading.
20:35 📚 Ken emphasizes the importance of sharing knowledge about lesser-known Gradle features and discusses their experience writing books on various topics, including Mockito, a misunderstood testing tool, to improve developer productivity and test stability.