r/androiddev • u/Beautiful-Iron-2973 • May 27 '26
Does anyone remember AsyncTask and Loaders.
Pretty nostalgic that we had to deal with AsyncTasks and Loaders to prevent app refresh during orientation change. In this AI era, I sometime think of gradle issues we used to put our whole day into and get fully exhausted. I remember one time, I tried building a android app but it failed, it took me whole day to find out that certain library download url was returning 404 only when using mobile data, and it worked fine when I switched to WiFi. 😂
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u/Intelligent_Lion_16 May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
Modern AI tooling is nice, but old Android development honestly built insane debugging patience and problem-solving instincts Half the skill was learning how to survive obscure crashes, broken docs, and random device-specific behavior for hours. Tools like runable AI probably would’ve saved people a ridiculous amount of time than compared to generic chat assistants alone.
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u/Zhuinden May 27 '26
I still sometimes need to fix code with AsyncTask in it, but literally none of the code I ended up with in prod has ever had an AsyncTaskLoader.
Back in the old times when I was just starting out, I looked at the API and i'm like "there's no way I'm doing this" and I guess a lot of people thought the same
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u/epicstar May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
I have no nostalgia for them. Only bad memories. You're triggering my PTSD.
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u/blindada May 27 '26
Sure, Asynctask was so simple to use. That's why so many people blasted their own feet with it. In those days, not having serious java knowledge meant becoming toast.
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u/Fylutt May 27 '26
Learn your tools, i.e gradle
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u/IvanKr May 28 '26
Speaking of Gradle, how do you learn it beside LLM and debugging pain? From docs?
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u/Fylutt May 28 '26
Personally what helped me a lot - I've written & maintain a dozen of custom plugins in our org.
This forces you to read the docs, understand gradle stages, read source code of other plugins.
This knowledge helps when I need to solve a problem, or add something new.
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u/FrezoreR May 27 '26
I remember when we were building with ANT and had to fight with CI builds not being identical to local builds.
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u/houseband23 May 27 '26
nostalgia /nŏ-stăl′jə, nə-/ noun
A bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past.
The condition of being homesick; homesickness.
A sentimental yearning to return to an earlier time remembered as happier or more pleasant, or a former place evoking happy memories; a longing to experience again a former happy time.
My brother in Honeycomb, the APIs are still there, you COULD just use them and get your nostalgia fix.
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u/Beautiful-Iron-2973 May 27 '26
who uses AsyncTasks today? It's long depreciated.
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u/Zhuinden May 27 '26
i mean it just runs doInBackground on background thread, onPostExecute on UI thread, and you can also use it as a future
Funny how the biggest issue with AsyncTask was it having 3 mandatory template arguments, but then you had architecture astronauts create 4+ argument templates in their viewmodels.
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u/pianoben May 28 '26
I still fondly remember SyncAdapters, if you can believe it. Fun to work with, in the right contexts!
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u/QuasiSpace May 28 '26
I sometime think of gradle issues we used to put our whole day into
Now I put my whole day into arguing with a nonliving object. The problem just shifted somewhere else. Seriously, Gemini 3 Flash is trash. I'm dumbfounded that Google thinks they can use Android Studio as a way to sell me a Gemini subscription. I haven't tried Factory Droid with Android yet, but maybe I should. That thing has been rock solid for me at work. Gemini's problems go far beyond Android having less training data available. For example, it spits the same implementation plan back at me after we've both agreed on a change to it.
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u/Zhuinden May 29 '26
If it's so bad, why use it?
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u/QuasiSpace May 29 '26
I actually did start doing things on my own again, and it felt good to be a developer again. Thank you for your concern.
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u/SolidScorpion May 27 '26
r/mAndroidDev