Kotlin

“The Koans” series consists of excerpts from my conversations with other engineers whom I turn to when I have questions. I usually come up with a question, ask them, and then try to understand their response. I then add some of my own insights to ensure my understanding (and potentially help others understand as well) before publishing them on this blog. Pretext Today, I started a project from scratch and added a core module. I then asked myself, “It might be useful to place this and that into the core module for reuse later—but what if I end up injecting it into every module and submodule? Wouldn’t that violate loose coupling and the Single Responsibility Principle?” Seeking clarity, I turned to Mohsen for guidance. That conversation led to a moment of enlightment. ...

Some boring backstory intro A few years ago, a friend roped me into a “simple” side project to make some extra cash. The plan? Build a few apps, slap on some ads, and watch the money roll in. Easy, right? Well… not quite. We quickly found ourselves tangled in a mess of issues. Google AdMob gave us trouble, some ad networks were outright shady, and others offered rates so bad, it wasn’t even worth the effort. After one particularly frustrating day, it hit me: “Why not build a library to handle all these ad networks and decide which ads to show based on the best deal?” Little did I know, this concept already had a name - ad mediation. Since we had a few adnetworks to play with, the idea of creating our own SDK seemed like a no-brainer. To our surprise, the SDK became such a hit (in our scale) that it completely overshadowed the apps we were trying to monetize in the first place. Suddenly, the SDK was the star of the show, and our apps? Well, they took a back seat. That was the start of my SDK-building journey. Fast forward through a decade of working with SDKs - both my own and ones from big-name companies and niche B2B partners - and let’s just say, I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the downright ugly when it comes to SDKs. I think I qualify as a SDK expert. ...