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Almost 11 years ago, Mathieu Calba and I launched the first version of the Capitaine Train app. Time flies! It still holds a special place in my heart and is still around today as Trainline Business EU. Here is a 🧵 of 3 fun facts about its creation and evolution:

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And your blogpost on Fragment animations in Capitain Train inspired a buch of developers (including me) to go further with animations! 🙌

1️⃣ Screenshots for each release were auto-generated with themed passengers: Bernadette & Jacques Chirac in French, Bonnie & Clyde in English, or Angela & Gerhard in German.

Each screenshot also hinted at the next release date. With a strict 6-week cycle, release N showed a departure date matching release N+1. A subtle touch we were proud of!

2️⃣ The app has an Easter Egg still visible today! Triple-tap the version number in settings to find it. Inspired by movie credits, it included animations and gestures carefully crafted for fun.

Hiding it was even more fun—I inlined everything (code, text, images) into a single file! Along the way, I learned a fun limitation: string literals in Java can’t exceed 65,535 bytes.