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React Native made me give up a project today

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Re: React Native made me give up a project today

#41
post #3

I've unfortunately had this experience many times in the Javascript ecosystem as a whole. I recently started writing about going back to a Rust project (check my submissions if you're interested) after 2 years and the experience couldn't be more different (incredibly positive, can't say enough good things). I would love to develop more for mobile platforms, but I just don't think the cost to my mental state is worth…

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Re: React Native made me give up a project today

#42

You quit after a single day? those are rookie tenacity numbers bud, gotta pump those up. give yourself at least a week, all new things are tough. I have been programming professionally for 15 years and I still encounter these uphill battles that feel terrible - but once you are over the hump it is often smooth sailing.

Failing fast, when you know the subject area well enough to deem the obstacles clearly insurmountable, may be a useful skill.

I'm not certain it's the case here though.

Re: React Native made me give up a project today

#43
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The native toolset works fine on M1, seems like dependencies issues, like always with React Native.

I was really tempted to buy a new Mac but there are still lots of gotchas my colleagues had to solve, so I decided to wait. Pushing ARM64 to developer machines still seems like a rushed decision imo, and it definitely shifted resources into building and supporting ARM64, resources that Apple doesn't necessarily pay for. At the end of the day, for me it matters how fast I can do a certain task and how much spare time…

I've been on M1 since last year (Switching from a 2015 MBP) and while there have been some issues, the transition has been going fairly swiftly. The main one I had to deal with was some google library embedded inside React Native Firebase. But the fix was fairly easy (setting XCode and Terminal.app to open using Rosetta). My Mac Mini is enough for daily work and my MBA is perfect for personal uses, never getting hot, even with multiple applications opened.

Re: React Native made me give up a project today

#44

You quit after a single day? those are rookie tenacity numbers bud, gotta pump those up. give yourself at least a week, all new things are tough. I have been programming professionally for 15 years and I still encounter these uphill battles that feel terrible - but once you are over the hump it is often smooth sailing.

My first ten years of software programming, i was at a distance of the build process. Only when i was experimented did i discover how messy and complicated the build/test/deploy process can become.

So, i fully agree that it can be discouraging, when you hoped 98% of your time would be pure dev time.

Re: React Native made me give up a project today

#45
Have you tried using expo? It makes development with react native much easier and does a bunch of stuff for you out of the box.

I'm a solo developer writing a fairly complex mobile application with watch integration and while some bits of the setup might be frustrating, however I would urge you to persist for more than a day if possible.

Indeed I had a huge amount of trouble porting my project from my previous mac to a new M1 but after the frustrating setup I just returned to writing JS and swift code and things have been perfectly fine.

Re: React Native made me give up a project today

#46
post #5

Use flutter if you’re looking to build something quick for cross platform iOS android. Upgrading versions or dependencies isn’t a nightmare. Dart is easy to use and a pretty good language. Lots of community support and dependencies. It works.

It's a dream if you're wanting to develop an app with webapp like functionality. Go beyond that and it just feels like a fight.

Re: React Native made me give up a project today

#47
post #5

Use flutter if you’re looking to build something quick for cross platform iOS android. Upgrading versions or dependencies isn’t a nightmare. Dart is easy to use and a pretty good language. Lots of community support and dependencies. It works.

Hard agree. I'm not a huge fan of cross-platform dev tools in general[1], but in terms of code hygiene, documentation, and "it just works" factor, Flutter is way ahead of React Native.

Admittedly it's more of a vibe than a hard metric, but a clean build of an empty React Native app for iOS has a triple-digit number of warnings in Xcode.

[1] Making a cross-platform app that's snappy and really nails the platform idioms tends to be at least as much work as making two equally-good native apps.

Re: React Native made me give up a project today

#48
Mobile development is very fast-paced. Even with the native Android SDK, dependency issue can bite you. If I start working on an old codebase and I can't get it to launch in a few hours. I just generate a new starter project and migrate the codebase, adding the newer version of each dependency (while taking care of breaking changes and so). It can be easier and take care of security issue at the same time.

Desktop, CLI and Web Backend programs can be easier because they are in a much stable environment. But mobile development is very much a high-speed train.

My own tips for React Native is just use the IDE (XCode, Android Studio) for each platform whenever I have to build and use a text editor for the JS part. Always worked flawlessly.

Re: React Native made me give up a project today

#50

Mobile development is very fast-paced. Even with the native Android SDK, dependency issue can bite you. If I start working on an old codebase and I can't get it to launch in a few hours. I just generate a new starter project and migrate the codebase, adding the newer version of each dependency (while taking care of breaking changes and so). It can be easier and take care of security issue at the same time. Desktop, C…

On top of that, Google is now requiring that you keep within 2 versions of the latest API, meaning that you have to reupload your app every 2 years (or less) to keep it on the store. Even if it's completely fine.

I think there's something similar for Apple, but I can't actually remember the details right now.

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