I think the New Year hangover is starting to clearā¦ And weāre looking ahead to a brilliant 2019.
This time of year is perfect to set your yearly goals and figure out what you really want to achieve in the next 12 months. And thatās exactly what weāre doing here at Monzo!
One thing that you may or may not know about our Product development is that weāre split into different squads depending on the overall goals. One of those squads is the Savings Squad, and our guest this week can tell you all about it!
Do you have any more concrete plans on paying for direct debits from pots (ring-fencing bills)?
I was talking to @anon94554600 about this and an idea I had was to allow selection of a target pot from the ārecurring paymentsā view, plus a ārecurring paymentsā tab on the pot itself.
Also, how did you get into Android development? Iām always curious of peoplesā routes into app development.
I honestly canāt think of a reason why we wouldnāt. I believe itās quite a nice offering to also be able to manage your money from your Chromebook!
We have discussed it in the past as a team and itās certainly something that we want to offer. Right now it just hasnāt had time given to it as we know we can make much more impact focusing our time on mobile phones.
Since I havenāt actually investigated this personally, Iām not actually sure of the main blocker, although I know weād definitely have to spend some time making the experience a better one since weād be dealing with completely different screen sizes/ratios. Iām afraid of seeing what that would look like! Maybe this can be something for a Monzo Time project soon, especially since Chromebook usage in general is constantly growing.
The app is sitting at currently about 96% Kotlin and itās been a gradual effort over the past year or so.
Weāve decided to take an approach of converting Java files to Kotlin once we have to touch them to complete a feature. This means it doesnāt become an extremely tedious task, but we will eventually end up with an 100% Kotlin conversion.
I certainly do! I really value the #android Slack channel and all the feedback that you all give. Itās really helpful on a daily basis and itās lovely to see a direct response to features weāve shipped. This certainly puts a smile on my face! At the end of the day, we do it all for the users and to make money work for everyone.
Maybe Iād redesign the Account tab to ensure that each of my Pots doesnāt take up my whole screen. Naa but seriously, I think Iād have to go with Account Aggregation; being able to show users all the money they have across any other bank accounts is a lovely idea with Open Banking. This would really help with boosting Monzoās offering and allow you to manage your money better. Considering that not everyone is #FullMonzo, I think this would make a big impact and weāre all about big impact!
Favourite Android appā¦thatās always a tough question for me! I use so many and there really are loads of great apps these days. Iād probably have to point you at some core Google apps though; I think theyāre often taken for granted but theyāre pretty darn magical. Google Photos and Maps have to be two of my favourite apps. The idea that I can launch an app and instantly map a route to anywhere in the world (business listings and places included) is a pretty crazy offering. Similarly with Photos, itās lovely to have a historical timeline of my whole life accessible from any device I log in to. Also being able to search keywords or locations and see every photo of that thing/person in a matter of a couple of seconds would have blown my mind a few years back.
No worries, not a problem at all! These may be the obvious answers, but the best thing has to be how concisely you can write Kotlin. In some cases, the comparison is quite ridiculous, 10 lines down to 1 or 2. Luckily here weāre not measured in lines of code produced (and I hope nobody is! ) , otherwise I think switching to Kotlin would have put us all out of a job! The worst thing was undoubtedly just starting with Kotlin. Having known Java and using it pretty much daily since 2010, switching to a language youāve never used before is definitely not going to be a nice experience initially. You have to accept that for a long while youāll struggle through the learning curve and lose all the prior knowledge/confidence you used to have. I can definitely say Iām glad to have bitten the bullet now.
Every week at Monzo, we as the Android team have an āAndroid Chatā where we discuss future improvements to the codebase and new conventions. Weāre trusted as a smaller team to decide how to take the app forward and donāt have to get sign off on decisions like this. Although it was before my time when the switch was first decided upon, I can almost certainly guarantee that everyone in the chat was jumping up and down with excitement about the switch and nobody would have said no to this. This is a lucky position to be in as I know it can often be hard to convince stakeholders at other companies that Kotlin should be the way to proceed. Itāll involve lots of discussions where you have to state that for a couple of months the team wonāt be making any perceivable forward momentum but itās better for the long term.
)
ā? 
Maybe this can be something for a Monzo Time project soon, especially since Chromebook usage in general is constantly growing. 
This means it doesnāt become an extremely tedious task, but we will eventually end up with an 100% Kotlin conversion.
Maybe he will one day. 
