🚫 The Hidden Costs of Jetpack Compose: A Developer’s Perspective

Jetpack Compose is often praised as the future of Android UI development — declarative, modern, and built with Kotlin in mind. But in the rush to adopt the latest and greatest, it’s easy to overlook the practical challenges that Compose introduces.

Here’s a grounded look at the downsides of Jetpack Compose, both from architectural and code-level standpoints.

⚠️ 1. Performance Penalties on Complex UIs

Compose uses a recomposition mechanism to update the UI. While this works well for small to medium UIs, performance can degrade quickly in complex, dynamic interfaces.

🔍 Example: Even small state changes can cause entire subtrees to recompose.

To optimize, you’d need to use key() or move sections to separate composables, introducing complexity that Compose was supposed to remove.

🧱 2. Steep Learning Curve for Traditional Android Devs

Many experienced Android developers are deeply familiar with XML-based UI and the View system. Switching to Compose often feels like learning a new platform altogether — especially with state hoisting, slot APIs, and unidirectional data flow.

🧠 Mental Shift:

vs.

There’s no clear XML/logic separation — everything is now in code.

🐞 3. Tooling and Debugging Gaps

Compose preview is great — when it works. But real-world usage often leads to broken previews, laggy rendering, or unhelpful error messages.

🛠️ Issue: You often end up running the app instead of trusting previews.

Logging recompositions or debugging deeply nested composables? Prepare to install extra tooling or use experimental APIs.

📦 4. Larger App Size and Dependencies

Jetpack Compose adds a significant increase in method count and APK size, especially for apps that use both Compose and legacy Views.

📉 Example:

• Compose-only: ~1.5 MB extra DEX size

• Hybrid app (Views + Compose): method count balloons quickly.

This can matter in apps close to the 64K method limit or targeting low-end devices.

🔄 5. Immature Ecosystem and Fragmentation

Compose is still catching up with years of View-based UI libraries. Many community libraries are either in alpha or Compose support is still “in progress.”

💡 Example: Not all Material 3 components have feature parity with Material Design Components (MDC). Some libraries only support Views or Compose — not both.

🧭 Conclusion: Not Always a Clear Win

Jetpack Compose is powerful, no doubt. But it's not a drop-in replacement — it's a paradigm shift. Teams should evaluate project complexity, team expertise, and ecosystem needs before adopting Compose wholesale.

For greenfield projects, it may make sense. For legacy apps, a hybrid approach — or a delayed adoption — could save months of refactoring pain.

💬 Agree? Disagree?

Drop your thoughts — are you feeling Compose’s growing pains, or loving the freedom it brings?

#AndroidDev #JetpackCompose #MobileDevelopment #DeveloperExperience #SoftwareEngineering