How to Answer: When creating an Android app, do you prefer working with Serializable or Parcelable? Why?
Advice and answer examples written specifically for a DoorDash job interview.
4. When creating an Android app, do you prefer working with Serializable or Parcelable? Why?
How to Answer
When asking this question, the Doordash interviewer assumes that you are familiar with the terms Serializable and Parcelable. If you're not and were to ask the interviewer to define the terms, you might as well terminate the interview and leave. Being able to describe terminology, processes, and procedures is critical to succeeding during an interview for an Android developer's job with Doordash. This is why it is recommended that you take some time to review all the terms you use in this profession, even if you don't deal with them regularly. If you do come across a term you are not familiar with, answer the question by describing how you would locate the information to the interviewer.
Written by William Swansen on November 13th, 2021
Answer Example
"Virtually all applications in the Android environment have to exchange data between activities. The data is added to another activity's intent object. For this to work, the object needs to be either Serializable or Parcelable. You can designate a class Serializable by implementing the interface, and Java will automatically serialize it. The downside to this approach is that it leads to the collection of garbage code and poor performance. I prefer to use Parcelable, which was developed specifically for Android. Using this approach, the serialization is implemented manually by the code, not the development platform. Also, reflection is not used during this process, and no garbage is created, so the application's performance is not impacted."
Written by William Swansen on November 13th, 2021