𝗦𝗵𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗽 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗳𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘀!

This actually applies everywhere in life - not just in programming. But in programming - it’s crucial to shorten your feedback loop.

Recently, I’ve been working with some obscure Google services - Google Play Asset Delivery and Google Play Feature Delivery. Both are not very popular services and the documentation is kind of terrible (didn’t expect that from Google tbh).

Here’s the problem, though - you can’t debug the code with these services. Because you have to bundle the assets and the modules (as split apks) together, you can’t debug through Android Studio. Therefore no access to the debugger. So the quickest feedback loop is thrown out the window straight away.

Here’s how I went from an incredibly slow feedback loop to less than 1 minute to get feedback.

1. Uploaded signed builds to Internal Testing (~10+ minutes to feedback, considering the build was 1.5 GB)
2. Uploaded unsigned builds to Internal App Sharing after the app was approved (~5 minutes feedback)
3. Swapped production assets/modules for test modules/assets, which are 6x less in size (~3 minutes feedback)
4. Used bundletool for local testing before uploading to Play (~2 minutes feedback)
5. Wrote a script that adds/removes resources locally, builds the bundle, converts it to APK, and then pushes it onto the device (<1 minute feedback)

At around point 5 - that’s where the productivity skyrocketed.

Fast feedback loop == faster improvement == faster results.