Liles - Asynchronous Android

Steve Liles is a self-confessed geek and has been an Android fan since the launch day of the G1. When he isn't at work building publishing systems and apps for newspapers and magazines, you'll find him tinkering with his own apps, building 3D printers, or playing RTS games. He is currently working with a start-up to build an advertising system that links the print and digital worlds using computer vision on Android and iOS devices.

I would like to sincerely thank the technical reviewers, who delivered their invaluable feedback gently and constructively. Without them, this book would be a pale shadow of the thing you now hold in your hands.

I once read that book acknowledgements are apologies to the people who have suffered. I must, therefore, unreservedly thank and apologize to my wife, not only for her patience and support during this project, but also through all the years and projects gone before.

David Bakin's first concurrent program was a Tektronix terminal emulator, written in assembly for an IMLAC PDS-1, which was a PDP-8-like machine with a GPU. He's written a lot of multiprocess and multithread concurrent programs and a number of tools for visualizing and debugging concurrent programs since then. He says computers now are orders of magnitude more powerful than the PDS-1, but concurrent programming hasn't gotten any easier.

His favorite languages are C++ and Haskell, and he prefers to use strong typing and functional programming techniques to write correct code. On the other hand, he also likes Smalltalk, Mathematica, and SIMD code in assembler because they're a lot of fun.

Elie Abu Haydar , born and raised in Beirut, has been interested in software development since his high school years. In 2006, he graduated from the American University of Science and Technology in Lebanon with a BS in Computer Science. As a software developer at KnowledgeView Ltd., Elie is seriously involved in every aspect of newsroom and publishing products where he uses Java to develop publishing solutions. These include backend web services and frontend web and mobile applications. Elie also contributes in the technical research and development of existing and future company projects.

Hassan Makki is a computer and communication engineer. He was born in 1979 in Lebanon and graduated in 2005. Since graduation, he has worked as a software engineer and has long-standing experience in C++, Java, and Android development. He began developing and managing Web and Android apps in 2011, and has developed around 30 apps related to news, music, sports, and advertisements.

Matt Preston is a professional software engineer with 14 years of experience in developing and maintaining a variety of systems for large international news and media organizations. He has worked on a range of low-latency/high-concurrency projects, ranging from mobile apps to distributed systems. Recently, he has been working on low-latency search and analytics using Elasticsearch.

I would like to thank my friend and colleague Steve Liles for this opportunity to let me review this book. We worked together for over 12 years and he's one of the best developers I have ever worked with. I learned a lot from him; I still continue to do so. Finally, thanks to Erica for all the tea; sorry about the late nights.

Hlder Vasconcelos has been a senior software engineer at Airtel ATN (Dublin, Ireland) since October 2012. He has extensive experience in designing and developing real-time/multithreaded Java and C/C++ applications for the telecommunications and aviation industry. Apart from his day-to-day job, for the last three years, he has been designing and developing native Android applications for Bearstouch Software and other third-party clients.

He graduated with a degree in Electronic & Telecommunications Engineering from the University of Aveiro in January 2006. He worked as a VoIP systems engineer at RedeRia Innovation (Aveiro, Portugal) from January 2006 to June 2007. He also worked as a software engineer at Outsoft/PT Inovao (Aveiro, Portugal) from October 2007 to October 2012.

Thanks to everyone involved in this project for your hard work and commitment, my awesome wife Tania for her love and support, and my parents and family for their awesome effort in my education. Additionally, I would like to thank my friends, colleagues, clients, and teachers for helping me to shape and improve my skills and perspectives during my career.