DEV Community: Kamaldeep Kakkar

👉 How to Reduce Android Build Time: Proven Tips for Faster Builds

Kamaldeep Kakkar — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 15:21:06 +0000

Slow Android builds are more than an inconvenience — they break your feedback loop and hurt developer productivity.
If your project takes several minutes to build after small changes, something is wrong.

After working on a medium-to-large Android codebase, I focused on fixing build-time bottlenecks instead of adding more hardware. The result: incremental builds dropped from ~10 minutes to 2–4 minutes.

Here’s what actually worked.

🧠 Why Android Builds Become Slow

Most slow builds come from:

Monolithic modules
Heavy annotation processing (KAPT)
Poor Gradle configuration
Too many exposed dependencies
Lack of incremental compilation

The fix isn’t a single flag—it’s a combination of optimizations.

1️⃣ Optimize Gradle Configuration (Start Here)

In gradle.properties:

org.gradle.daemon=true
org.gradle.parallel=true
org.gradle.caching=true
org.gradle.configureondemand=true

Why this helps:

Reuses the Gradle process
Builds independent modules in parallel
Skips tasks that haven’t changed
Avoids configuring unused modules meaningfully

👉 This alone can reduce build time by 30–50%.

2️⃣ Enable Configuration Cache (Gradle 8+)

Gradle 8 introduced Configuration Cache, which stores the task graph from previous builds.

Instead of re-configuring everything on every build, Gradle reuses what it already knows.

Result: faster subsequent builds, especially during local development.

3️⃣ Replace KAPT with KSP

KAPT is slow because it:

Generates Java stubs
Breaks incremental compilation
Adds unnecessary overhead

KSP is:

Kotlin-native
Incremental
Much faster

// Before
kapt("com.google.dagger:hilt-compiler")

// After
ksp("com.google.dagger:hilt-compiler")

If you’re using Hilt, Room, or Moshi, this change alone can give a noticeable speed boost.

4️⃣ Modularize Your Project (Biggest Long-Term Win)

Monolithic projects force Gradle to recompile too much code.

Instead of:
app (everything)

Prefer:

:core
:domain
:data
:feature:login
:feature:home

Benefits:

Faster incremental builds
Better parallel execution
Cleaner architecture
Easier ownership at scale
This is often the single biggest build-time improvement in large apps.

5️⃣ Prefer implementation Over api

Using api exposes dependencies to downstream modules and forces recompilation.

// Prefer this
implementation("com.squareup.retrofit2:retrofit")

// Avoid unless required
api("com.squareup.retrofit2:retrofit")

Rule of thumb:
If a dependency is not part of the public contract, it should be implementation.

This improves:

Build performance
Encapsulation
Long-term maintainability

6️⃣ Disable Unused Android Build Features

Every enabled feature adds build work.

android {
    buildFeatures {
        viewBinding = true
        dataBinding = false
        aidl = false
        renderScript = false
        shaders = false
    }
}

Only enable what you actually use.

7️⃣ Measure Before Optimizing

Don’t guess.

Use:

Build Analyzer
Gradle Build Scan (--scan)

Measure first, then optimize the real bottleneck.
Blind optimization often wastes time.

✅ Final Results

By combining these techniques:

Clean Gradle setup
KSP instead of KAPT
Proper modularization
Dependency hygiene

Incremental builds dropped from ~10 minutes to 2–4 minutes.

🧠 Key Takeaway

Reducing Android build time isn’t about one magic flag.
It’s about measuring, understanding the bottleneck, and applying the right optimizations.

If your builds are slow, your feedback loop is broken.

What is produceState in Jetpack Compose? Real Use Cases, Examples & Best Practices

Kamaldeep Kakkar — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 14:26:54 +0000

produceState is one of the most underrated but powerful APIs in Jetpack Compose. It acts as a bridge between coroutines and state—the moment your suspend function updates a value, Compose updates the UI automatically.

*In this article, I break down:
*

What produceState actually does
Why it's more than just a helper function
Internal working (with lifecycle + coroutine cancellation)
Real-world use cases like API calls, flows, timers & listeners

Best practices and mistakes to avoid

If you're building real Android apps with Compose, understanding produceState will make your async UI code cleaner and safer.

Read the full guide here:

Channels in Kotlin Coroutines: A Complete Q&A Guide for Android Apps

Kamaldeep Kakkar — Sat, 06 Dec 2025 14:38:37 +0000

hannels are one of the most underrated features in Kotlin Coroutines. They solve problems that Flow alone cannot — especially when you're dealing with concurrency, event streams, or multi-producer pipelines in Android apps.

I’ve created a complete Q&A guide that covers:

What exactly Channels are

How they work under the hood

Channel vs Flow vs SharedFlow vs callbackFlow

Real Android use cases (MVI event streams, background tasks, producer–consumer patterns)

Advanced interview questions with detailed answers

If you want to strengthen your Coroutines knowledge or prepare for Android interviews, this guide is made for you.

👉 Read the full article here:

Mastering Side Effects in Jetpack Compose

Kamaldeep Kakkar — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 15:13:04 +0000

If you're building modern Android apps with Jetpack Compose, understanding side effects is non-negotiable.
Compose is declarative, which means the UI can recompose many times — and that creates challenges if you trigger actions directly inside a Composable.

This is where side effects come in.

✔ Why Side Effects Matter

Actions like API calls, logging, toasts, or starting coroutines should not run during recomposition.
Compose gives us dedicated APIs to handle them properly:

🔹 LaunchedEffect

Run suspend functions safely when a key changes (or once).

🔹 DisposableEffect

Perfect for registering/unregistering listeners or other setup/cleanup logic.

🔹 SideEffect

Push Compose state to external objects.

🔹 rememberCoroutineScope

Launch coroutines from events like button clicks.

🔹 snapshotFlow

Turn Compose state into a Flow stream.

🔹 produceState

Convert async data sources directly into Compose State.

I’ve written a complete breakdown of each API with real-world examples from production-level Android apps. If you’re working with Compose seriously, this will save you from subtle but painful bugs.

Read the full article here.

How async and await Handle Errors in Kotlin Coroutines

Kamaldeep Kakkar — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 09:31:05 +0000

How async and await Handle Errors in Kotlin Coroutines

In this article, we will discuss how error handling works in Kotlin Coroutines when we are using async, await(), and awaitAll()

Why Error Handling in async is Different from launch❗

launch = (fire — and — forget)

It does not return any value
If something fails inside launch, there is no place to store the exception
➡️ So it throws immediately
➡️ Exception cancels the parent scope (fail-fast)

async = produces a value (Deferred)

It returns a Deferred: it is like a promise/future
It holds: success result OR exception
➡️ Exceptions inside async are captured, not thrown
➡️ They only get thrown when we do await()

Read the full article here:

Link

Why Error Handling Matters in Kotlin Coroutines (launch {} Explained)

Kamaldeep Kakkar — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 15:35:17 +0000

Kotlin coroutines made asynchronous programming clean and structured.
*But Error handling is where most developers struggle.
*
I break down:

How launch {} handles failures
Why exceptions propagate and cancel sibling coroutines
What “fail-fast” really means
How to avoid unexpected crashes in your ViewModel

📖 Read the full article here:

Full Link

Deep Dive into Jetpack Compose Architecture -Compiler, Runtime, and UI Explained

Kamaldeep Kakkar — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 12:16:10 +0000

Jetpack Compose isn’t just a UI-builder — it’s a full architecture:** compiler + runtime + UI toolkit**. Understanding what happens behind the scenes helps you:

debug complex UI/state issues,
optimize performance & rendering,
design scalable and maintainable UI architecture in Kotlin + Compose.

Read the full article here → (https://medium.com/stackademic/deep-dive-into-jetpack-compose-architecture-compiler-runtime-and-ui-explained-f2ad819e4826)

#Android #AndroidDev #JetpackCompose #Kotlin #MobileDevelopment

Parallel API Calls in Kotlin: async vs Flow.zip vs Flow.combine (Complete Guide)

Kamaldeep Kakkar — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 13:59:38 +0000

🚀 Very Common Use Case in Android: Parallel API Calls in Kotlin

Whether you're loading profile + dashboard + notifications together or fetching multiple endpoints for one screen — parallel execution matters for performance.

In Kotlin/Android, we mostly use these three approaches 👇

async

➡️ “Start now, collect later.”

Best when you need true parallel execution inside coroutines and want control over error handling and cancellation.

Flow.zip

➡️ “Wait for everyone, then emit once.”

Use when results must be paired positionally — like page 1 with page 1, page 2 with page 2. Perfect for synchronized emissions.

Flow.combine

➡️ “Emit whenever anyone updates.”

Use when streams emit independently and UI should update whenever any source changes, like real-time data + cached data.

Read the full article here:

https://medium.com/stackademic/parallel-api-calls-in-kotlin-async-vs-flow-zip-vs-flow-combine-complete-guide-87515bcc57e5

Debounce, Throttle & Sample in Kotlin Flow — When to Use Which?

Kamaldeep Kakkar — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 13:15:36 +0000

When building modern Android apps with Coroutines and Flow, we often need to control “how often” we react to events — typing, clicking, scrolling, sensor updates, etc.

*Three main operators help us to do this:
*

Debounce
Throttle
Sample

These terms sound similar, but their behavior is very different.
This article explains them in simple language, real-world analogies, and Android use-cases — with Jetpack Compose focus.

Debounce: Wait until the user stops typing -> Best For Search box
Throttle: Allow only one event in a time window -> Best For Button taps
Sample: Sensors/rapid data -> Best For Take the latest value every X ms

Read full Article Here :
https://medium.com/stackademic/debounce-throttle-sample-in-kotlin-flow-when-to-use-which-86b3781038d9