2025 Jan 📨
Happy New Year, folks!
Welcome to the January edition of the Fragmented Podcast newsletter.
It’s been a while since we last sent out an email update— my apologies if this catches you by surprise.
Let me reintroduce this newsletter: I want to give you a glimpse behind the scenes of Fragmented— how each episode comes together, the direction I’m taking the podcast, solicit ideas, or just share some fun additional thoughts.
🎬 Behind the Scenes
Reboot
If you haven’t listened to episode #250 yet, I highly recommend it. It’s the one where Donn officially signs off as co-host. Having Donn as a partner was such a blessing; we complemented each other well, each invisibly managing different parts of the show. Now, with everything falling on one person’s shoulders 😅, I’m more grateful than ever for all he did.
For the reboot, I had three big goals in mind:
Reboot the website
Reboot the brand
Reboot the newsletter
Reboot the website
The website was previously hosted on WordPress, and it just worked. Neither of us were inclined to touch it (if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it right). But the recent WordPress drama finally pushed me to make a change. I switched Fragmented to a highly customized Hugo theme that I also use for my personal site—and couldn’t be happier.
The search is ⚡ fast and actually useful (even I rely on it to find content). We now have cleaner audio embeds so you can listen to episodes directly, the site has zero bloat, and it’s lightning-fast thanks to all the SSG goodness. Other upgrades include customizable RSS feeds and cleaner subscription links. The site is leaner, faster, and just better in so many ways.
Reboot the brand
While I loved the logo we had, in 2023 Google gave the bugdroid a makeover and suddenly our logo started to feel dated. I pulled out the Figma and and gave it a refresh. I also took the opportunity to tweak the typography and color palette. It’s fun to see how our logo has evolved over the years.
Reboot the newsletter
And that brings me to the final piece of the reboot: this newsletter. The new format will feature two sections:
1. 🎬 Behind the Scenes: In this section, I’d love to share stories and insights on the making of Fragmented itself. All the talk around me updating the website, my podcast gear, different or fun ideas I’m planning try will show up here. I considered adding this as an after-show special, but it felt like it would dilute the focus of each episode. Plus, I wanted to reserve some exclusive content for you, our kind subscribers.
2. 🎧 Episode Updates: I’ll share the most recent episodes we’ve released and fun factoids about each episode.
I genuinely hope you enjoy this format and find extra value in these newsletters.
🎧 Episode updates
Ep #250 - Bittersweet beginnings
Donn & I actually had this recorded for a good month or so before it’s official release. He was kind enough to give me some time to at least get the new website up and running. This way the heaviness of him leaving was ever so slightly countered with the excitement of a new direction.
Many many people thought we just paused the podcast (for good reason) but I just needed sometime to get all of this lined up. I’m not sure what the future holds but I feel really good about the present.
Ep #251 - There’s a new king in DI town
For the first post-reboot episode, I knew exactly what I wanted: to shine more light on kotlin-inject. It has become the defacto DI solution for (C)KMP (in addition to Koin), yet it hasn’t received enough attention. This episode felt true to my revised mission of capturing the #AndroidDev zeitgeist.
Ep #252 - Everyone needs a starter template
I almost decided not to do this one because I have so much to say on each of my individual technology choices for the starter template. But Iyury’s fantastic post on devex and how Amper could fix a lot of these problems kept gnawing at me. I wanted to surface it somehow. Then Márton wrote about the November Amper update and it felt like a sign.
Ep #253 - logcat - a new look at logging with Piwai from Square
While debating the reboot, I reached out to Piwai early on. I was curious if he’d be interested (himself) to talk about a cool library that most folks haven’t looked at or used. Him agreeing to do it and being excited about the idea indirectly inspired my new direction around capturing the zeitgeist of #AndroidDev.
Ep #254 - 8× faster 5× memory savings with Dan Rusu’s Immutable Arrays
I’m really proud of this one. Dan is a hard man to track down 😅. But reading his posts I knew there was a lot to learn from him. I was also really interested in getting the take of someone who’s really invested in kotlin, but isn’t primarily an Android developer.
Signing off
If you enjoyed this content, please share it with others— and let me know what you’d like to see more of in the newsletter!
The best way to contact Fragmented is by replying to this email or visiting our contact page.
🙇 Thank you for your ears, eyes & time. 🙏
- Kaushik