What a Compose test suite should actually contain
A useful Compose suite is mostly unit tests, a layer of state-driven component tests, screenshot tests for visual regressions, and a handful of journeys. The shape matters more than the count.
Engineering
Compose, Kotlin, and multiplatform work — the mechanism under the symptom.
229 posts
A flaky test is a timing assumption you didn't know you made
Compose's test framework auto-syncs with the composition, so most tests need no waiting at all. The failures come from things that never go idle, and from work the framework cannot see.
Writing my own performance review honestly, for once
Listing what I shipped is not the review. Listing what changed for other people is.
Find, act, assert — and the rule that decides which test to write at all
Compose testing is finders, actions and assertions over the semantics tree. The API is small; the judgment is choosing between a unit test, a Compose test with a fake, and a full instrumented test.
The meeting that should have been a pull request, and vice versa
Decisions need synchronous time; proposals need written artifacts.
I measured my own tooling for a month and deleted half of it
Most of a toolchain is habit rather than measured benefit.
Your UI tests query the accessibility tree, which is why testTag is a last resort
Compose UI tests match against the semantics tree, not the layout. Selecting by text and content description tests what users perceive; selecting by testTag tests an implementation detail you invented for the test.
The handover that actually worked, and the four I botched first
A handover is not a document dump. The test is whether the team ships without you in week one.
The rate conversation I kept getting wrong
Quoting a day rate invites a comparison to salary. Quoting against the outcome changes the question.
Four tools, four questions, and none of them answers another's
Layout Inspector, the compiler reports, Macrobenchmark and the system trace each answer a different question. Using the wrong one produces confident, wrong conclusions, and knowing the split is most of performance work.
Scope creep is a contract problem, not a communication problem
Being clearer about the scope does not stop it changing. A written change process does.
The fixed-price project that cost me three weeks of unpaid work
Fixed price transfers all estimation risk to you. Price it or change the contract shape.