I am starting my journey into Android development ...

# android

[Nicholas Douso]

I am starting my journey into Android development using Kotlin. Before I start posting questions seeking development help... what constitutes appropriate questions to post here in #android as opposed to questions in say #multiplatform, #compose or an external discord?

[kenkyee]

This is a kotlin slack server. If you think of all channels with that in mind, you should be ok.

If you have generic Android questions, click the channel description up top to see alternate places to ask.
If you have kotlin language issues related to Android, this it correct channel.

Multiplatform kotlin issues go into #multiplatform
Compose kotlin issues go to #compose

[Nicholas Douso]

Thanks for the reply @kenkyee. I guess that is where I'm confused and don't want to end up with a bunch of people replying with not kotlin but kotlin colored .

Is it reasonable that I ask for an example of a type of question that you would ask in #android? I have seen that anything related to accessing a device storage would be grounds for not kotlin but kotlin colored.

[kenkyee]

that's a generic Android question "how do you access device storage on Android"

[Nicholas Douso]

yes, but can you provide a question that would be "on topic".

[Nicholas Douso]

not trying to be difficult, just trying to understand.

[kenkyee]

https://kotlinlang.slack.com/archives/C0B8M7BUY/p1710759744248609

[Nicholas Douso]

thank you!

[kenkyee]

It's hard to find them because so many random non-kotlin android questions get asked in this channel. Some other channels (e.g. #spring) have this as well, but this channel is the worst example of it 😞

[Nicholas Douso]

that is what it seems and i did not want to contribute to it.

[Colton Idle]

it definitely does not help that there is not another good forum that includes so many great devs in one place. I wish we had a kotlinlang slack for android. Maybe google should start one lol

I do remember the good ol days of android dev irc and you'd have some of the framework team in there answering questions. and then you'd get people coming in asking about AOSP and mods and stuff and we'd have to tell them they're in the wrong room lol

[kenkyee]

That's what android-united slack is supposed to be...a slack for Android devs.

We used to have googlers in this channel when Kotlin was first being used too but so many not kotlin but kotlin colored questions made this channel not useful for them... 😞

[Colton Idle]

yeah, but no googlers (that i can tell) in android-united. but yeah. im not disagreeing. just almost wish android team would put up a slack or something (like the firebase team did [they had both slack and discord]) and getting help from there was awesome. but im sure it would get crazy fast.

[kenkyee]

The difference (covered in another thread) is that those channels cover kotlin specific libraries.

Your framework question is spot on. There's android-united.slack.com

[gildor]

Kotlin libraries are welcomed here, any may have own channel with any context

The whole not kotlin but kotlin colored reaction in this channel is getting a bit ridiculous.

What would you suggest? Allow offtopic?

this one seems to be the only one with this strict rule where the discussions have to be Kotlin-related

It's not true, all channels are the same, and just this channel is very off-topic more than others

[gildor]

Like we wouldn’t want this workspace to become the default place to ask for Android help.

Nothing political in this, it's an actual reason mentioned in Code of Conduct, topic of this community is Kotlin, same as for any forum/subreddit/tematic chat, it's just how thematic communities work

[gildor]

think a quick look shows that the library channels are not focused on how to use Kotlin together with those libraries,

Well, we should moderate better in this case 🙂

[gildor]

It doesn't make offtopic correct for this channel