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Developing Our First iOS App with React Native

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Re: Developing Our First iOS App with React Native

#41

Post by jordwalke »

leosantos wrote: post #28

On a more technical note - I'm exploring React Native (having significant experience shipping native iOS Apps) and while on the face of it React Native looks amazing, as I go deeper into building something production quality, I've hit roadblocks with doing simple (natively) things like scrolling a scroll view to focus on a text field that's partially visible and changing the offsets of a scroll view to prevent the ke…

I've implemented one solution to this in FB's Groups App. Try that experience out and let me know what you think. Also, Nick Lockwood should comment here.

Re: Developing Our First iOS App with React Native

#42

Post by Fargren »

deskamess wrote: post #30
wvenable wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On my mobile I absolutely use and prefer native applications. I only use my mobile web browser for web browsing tasks. On my desktop, I only use my web browser for web browsing (searches, news, content, etc) and I hardly use any web applications. I don't feel like I'm unique in this. I think this "synthesis of both approaches" has merits.

There are times when the native app is great, but all the permissions that you have to give up have me fallback to the web version. There is a native phone app for a popular online course that has recently started asking for access to 'Phone Id/what not' on Android. Why? Just show me the videos of the courses I paid for. I refused to update and these days I just log in via Chrome and play the video on there. Not the…

You can, starting form android 6.0. Adoption of the latest Android versions is as slow as ever, though.

Re: Developing Our First iOS App with React Native

#43

Post by estreeper »

Smudge wrote: post #6

> Learn once, write anywhere What's most amazing to me about React Native was how quickly we were able to go from idea to product (~3 months working only part-time) using our existing knowledge as web developers. We did have to write a few lines of Objective-C here and there, but for the most part all of the views and interactions fell together the same way a webapp would.

As someone who is about to embark on a similar route, that's interesting and exciting to hear. Was it both Android and iOS? If so, how much of the codebase/time was spent on shared code versus needing to write platform-specific portions?

I've seen the Facebook post about developing Ads Manager (though it glosses over some details), but it would be interesting to hear other people's experiences.

https://code.facebook.com/posts/1189117404435352/react-nativ...

Re: Developing Our First iOS App with React Native

#44

Post by rimantas »

endemic wrote: post #31
hire_charts wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that Chrome supports notifications (on Android) I was able to uninstall the native Facebook app and rely exclusively on the web version (which actually loads faster for my anyway). Still have the icon on my homescreen, still get the same notifications -- the main difference is how much better my battery life is now!

Not to mention you don't have to store a 100MB app.

So you download it each time?

Re: Developing Our First iOS App with React Native

#45

Post by rimantas »

currentoor wrote: post #26
mostafaberg wrote: post #20

Why is this on the top of HN ? Honestly, this is a bad thing, not a thing to show off. To quote the author: "We're web developers, not iOS developers." EXACTLY, don't bring your web tech into native platforms, learn to do it the right way or just hire someone who knows how to do it. Seeing things like that creeping into becoming a norm makes me cringe

This is on the top of HN because people, like me, are interested in it. You say learn to do it the "right way", by that logic we should have stuck to making desktop only apps instead of browser based web apps. I'm not saying this is better or worse. But I certainly think it's an approach worth considering.

No, it is not. "I don't know what I am doing" mentality already hurts the web, where hordes of developers without understanding of the strengths and limitations of the platform are making angular monstrosities, now the same is being pushed to mobile. Luckily it does not have much chances there.

Re: Developing Our First iOS App with React Native

#46

Post by trollied »

Apocryphon wrote: post #12
trollied wrote: post #9

Still, how do you get hired as a lead mobile dev without having and native platform skills? The entire development world has gone tits-up in the last 10 years. It's all about nonsense package management for JavaScript libraries (why can't I just include a .js off a cdn? npm? What the actual fuck?), and an endless stream of disparate components which are often ill-supported, or just plain ditched after they've had the…

Isn't the advancement of computer science towards further abstraction?

No. You still need to teach the fundamentals or you'll run out of people to do everything low level. It's no longer a science when it's wishy washy high level

Re: Developing Our First iOS App with React Native

#48

Post by Smudge »

estreeper wrote: post #43
Smudge wrote: post #6

> Learn once, write anywhere What's most amazing to me about React Native was how quickly we were able to go from idea to product (~3 months working only part-time) using our existing knowledge as web developers. We did have to write a few lines of Objective-C here and there, but for the most part all of the views and interactions fell together the same way a webapp would.

As someone who is about to embark on a similar route, that's interesting and exciting to hear. Was it both Android and iOS? If so, how much of the codebase/time was spent on shared code versus needing to write platform-specific portions? I've seen the Facebook post about developing Ads Manager (though it glosses over some details), but it would be interesting to hear other people's experiences. https://code.facebook.…

We built it for iOS, but I expect Android would have been a similar experience (albeit with much more cross-device testing required).

Hard to say how much of it was platform-specific, since we only targeted 1 platform (for now). But the large majority of the code we wrote exists in React components or in related JS files, so porting it over to Android should be a matter of decoupling the parts of the code that rely on native features (i.e. camera, navigation, etc).

A lot of that work is already happening in the React Native community so I expect the cross-platform support will keep getting easier.

Re: Developing Our First iOS App with React Native

#49

Post by trollied »

watty wrote: post #14
trollied wrote: post #9

Still, how do you get hired as a lead mobile dev without having and native platform skills? The entire development world has gone tits-up in the last 10 years. It's all about nonsense package management for JavaScript libraries (why can't I just include a .js off a cdn? npm? What the actual fuck?), and an endless stream of disparate components which are often ill-supported, or just plain ditched after they've had the…

The world is changing. Our industry is changing every day, week, and year. Developers before you laughed at your high level C while they were using punch cards. The successful ones realize this and adapt.

You judge, yet I've spent the last few days doing some amazing things with d3.js and I'm all over modern web dev. Being able and not liking the state of it are completely different.

Re: Developing Our First iOS App with React Native

#50

Post by cridenour »

jordwalke wrote: post #41
leosantos wrote: post #28

On a more technical note - I'm exploring React Native (having significant experience shipping native iOS Apps) and while on the face of it React Native looks amazing, as I go deeper into building something production quality, I've hit roadblocks with doing simple (natively) things like scrolling a scroll view to focus on a text field that's partially visible and changing the offsets of a scroll view to prevent the ke…

I've implemented one solution to this in FB's Groups App. Try that experience out and let me know what you think. Also, Nick Lockwood should comment here.

Is the solution something you can share on a general level? Would love to see how you approached it.
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