React Native Radio

This week, Josh Warwick teaches us how to build applications that work offline and on poor connections. He explains 6 approaches to working offline and when and how to use them. Panelists Josh Justice Charles Max Wood Sponsors G2i Infinite Red CacheFly ____________________________________________________________ "The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job" by Charles Max Wood is now available on Amazon. Get Your Copy Today! ____________________________________________________________ Links Jonathan Martin Picks Josh Justice: React Data Layer Josh Warwick: Nine Lies About Work Charles Max Wood: Clean Coders Podcast General Conference

The panel dives into the pros and cons of writing PWAs versus writing React Native applications. We work out the definition (sort of) of a PWA and having a web application that works well on mobile and the availability and complexity tradeoffs between the two solutions. Panelists Jamon Holmgren Josh Justice Charles Max Wood Sponsors G2i Infinite Red CacheFly ____________________________________________________________ "The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job" by Charles Max Wood is now available on Amazon. Get Your Copy Today! ____________________________________________________________ Links Google - Progressive Web Apps Progressive Web Apps: Escaping Tabs Without Losing Our Soul Apple's Refusal to Support PWA's Alexander Pope: ServiceWorkers Outbreak Why Was Service Worker Merged into Create React App? EmberConf 2016: Opening Keynote by Yehuda Katz & Tom Dale Picks Josh Justice: Sleeping Queens Sushi Go! Jamo

Joe Lafiosca gave a lightning talk at Chain React 2019 and wrote a library that allows you to drag and drop views in React Native. If you need to move, re-order, or manage elements or lists in your React Native app, you should check out Drax. Joe walks us through the capabilities of the library and how it came together. Panelists Jamon Holmgren Charles Max Wood Guest Joe Lafiosca Sponsors G2i Infinite Red CacheFly ____________________________________________________________ "The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job" by Charles Max Wood is now available on Amazon. Get Your Copy Today! ____________________________________________________________ Links [Drax the Destroyer](00:35:47 Charles Wood: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drax_the_Destroyer) Chain React 2019 - Joe Lafiosca - Lightning Talk - 3rd Party Nightmares GitHub Nuclearpasta react-native-drax Facebook.github React Native Docs Haxe Twitter Joe Lafiosca Proxi Coach

Omri explains how to build React Native apps that will be used by thousands and thousands of users across a large website infrastructure. He explains the architecture and modules used and how they approach native code for Wix's applications. Panelists Josh Justice Jamon Holmgren Christopher Reyes Guest Omri Bruchim Sponsors G2i Infinite Red CacheFly ____________________________________________________________ "The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job" by Charles Max Wood is now available on Amazon. Get Your Copy Today! ____________________________________________________________ Links Chain React 2018: Detox: A year in. Building it, Testing with it by Rotem Mizrachi-Meidan Detox: Github Detox Instruments Chain React 2019 - Lorenzo Sciandra - All Hands on Deck - The React Native Community Experience Github Remx Picks Josh Justice: Pitch Meetings Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids Online Cours

In this episode of React Native Radio the panel dives deep into native code. They discuss how it works and shares their experiences using it. They start by discussing why native code is useful and why would anyone choose to use it. The panel defines the bridge and what it means for native code. They consider why React Native developers coming from a web development background are intimidated by the native side. The panel shares use cases for native code, when native SDKs need to be integrated and building UI components, two specific examples from their jobs. They discuss, Java, Kotlin, Swift, and Objective C. They compare these different languages and explain which one is the best for certain situations. The panel shares learning resources and discusses native code for iOS and Android. Panelists Josh Justice Jamon Holmgren Christopher Reyes Sponsors G2i Infinite Red CacheFly ____________________________________________________________ "The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Yo

In this episode of React Native Radio Josh Justice interviews Yassir Hartani. Yassir writes a blog about all he learns while programming with React Native. They begin by discussing his article about React Native Navigation. Yassir explains why he prefers React Native Navigation and walks Josh through the article. They move on to share tips for getting into React Native development. Yassir shares the differences between React Native development and developing on the web. He explains the difference in base components, syntax, and naming. For those used to developing on the web he recommends using styled-components. Next, the discuss best practices for upgrading and explain why upgrading in React Native can be painful. They discuss tips for improving user experience including, keyboards, clickable buttons, native feedback, and safe area view. Developer experience tips are next. Yassir recommends building for both iOS and Android, test for both platforms as well. They also recommend testing on a physical de

In this episode of React Native Radio the panel discusses JavaScript Language Features. They discuss their uses, which ones they prefer and how they shape the language. Josh Justice starts the discussion with Babel, a transpiling tool. They explain what it is and invite listeners to donate to the project. Josh also explains what ECMAScript is. Next, they discuss arrow functions, explaining what they are used for. Arrow functions clean up code and encourage clean programming. They also help with “this” keyword binding. The panel discusses the class keyword, and how it made its way into JavaScript. They discuss class features, class properties, and private fields. Though it is a bit of a controversial topic right now the panel discusses the keywords for declaring a variable, var, let, and const. They share thoughts on the controversy and their preferences. ESLint and Prettier are recommended. They compare promise and async-await. Jamon Holmgren shares his experiences from the time before promise and async-

In this episode of React Native Radio the panel walks through an article written by Net Guru outlining the pros and cons of React Native. The first pro the panel discusses is that is React Native is faster to build. The panel shares their experience with building with React Native. They agree that React Native is fast unless unique customization is necessary; this leads them to discuss one of the cons of React Native, the lack of some custom modules. The next pro they discuss is the fact that this one framework can work across multiple platforms. While they agree React Native is not perfect, it does do a good job sharing code and other things across platforms. This saves on cost and time. Another pro they discuss is hot reloading, which included over the air updates and fast refresh. Smaller teams are both pros and cons according to the panel. Smaller teams are possible because everyone works together, there is no longer a need for an iOS team and an Android team. The panel does point out specialists in

In this episode of React Native Radio Charles Max Wood continues interviewing speakers at RxJS Live. First, he interviews Mike Ryan and Sam Julien. They gave a talk about Groupby, a little known operator. They overview the common problems other mapping operators have and how Groupby addresses these problems. The discuss with Charles where these types of operators are most commonly used and use an analogy to explain the different mapping operators. Next, Charles talks to Tracy Lee. Her talk defines and explains the top twenty operators people should use. In her talk, she shows real-world use cases and warns against gotchas. Tracy and Charles explain that you don’t need to know all 60 operators, most people only need about 5-10 to function. She advises people to know the difference between the different types of operators. Tracy ends her interview by explaining her desire to inspire women and people of minority groups. She and Charles share their passion for diversity and giving everyone the chance to do wha

In this episode of React Native Radio the panel overviews the libraries and tools they choose for their stack and explain why they choose them. Christopher Reyes starts by discussing his favorite notes app, Bear Notes. He shares the features from the app that makes him love it so much. The panel also discusses Notion as a good resource for organizing teams. Next, Chris outlines the stack he would recommend for someone new to development and React Native. He recommends React Native CLI, React Native Navigation, Native Base, and Async Storage. Chris explains why he recommends these tools. The panel also discusses the importance of going back to your source to make sure you are using the most up to date product. The panel considers what version five of React Navigation with the component-based API will change in their everyday work. They all express their excitement to try it. Jamon Holmgren is the next panelist to outline his stack. He builds with Ignite and uses the stack that it provides. Jamon expl

In this episode of React Native Radio the panel discusses the different approaches frameworks have for building stack. The panel takes a moment to define the two major approaches, libraries and batteries included. They list various frameworks and discuss where they lie on the scale of libraries to omakase. Frameworks like React and React Native are the panels examples of a libraries approach framework. Developers pick and choose libraries to build their stack, React is basically just a UI library. They use Ruby on Rails as the example of an omakase approach; about 80% of the stack is chosen for you. The pros and cons of each approach are considered. The panel shares their experiences picking libraries for their React and React Native apps and describe some of the challenges. Along with the freedom and flexibility given to the developer with a libraries approach, there is also the stress of keeping up with the latest libraries and tools. The beauty of this approach is the diversity and decentralization.

In this episode of React Native Radio Charles Max Wood does interviews at RxJS Live. His first interview is with Ben Lesh, a core team member of RxJS. Ben has been working on RxJS for the last four years. In his talk, he shares the future of RxJs, the timeline for versions 7 and 8. With Charles, he discusses his work on RxJS and the adoption of RxJS. Next, Charles interviews Sam Julien and Kim Maida. They gave a talk together covering the common problems developers have when learning RxJS. In the talk, they share tips for those learning RxJS. Charles wonders what inspired them to give this talk. Both share experiences where they encouraged someone to use RxJS but the learning curve was to steep. They discuss the future of RxJS adoptions and resources. Finally, Charles interviews Kim alone about her second talk about RxJS and state management. She explains to Charles that many state management libraries are built on RxJS and that it is possible to roll out your own state management solution with RxJS. Th

In this episode of React Native Radio the panel discusses Josh Justice’s blog post outlining four approaches to using React Native and a fifth approach he has heard about since publishing the post. Josh summarizes the post and explains how knowing the benefits of each approach can minimize the downsides of using React Native that scare people away from using it. Understanding each approach can also help you decide which approach would work best for your company. The first approach and the recommend approach recommended by React Native is Expo. Josh explains what Expo is and how it simplifies React Native for those starting out. The panel shares their experiences with Expo and considers the benefits of using it. They list many of the tools that Expo has right of the box and praise the simplicity of setting up and using for developers unfamiliar with native development tools. The next approach to using React Native is React Native CLI. React Native CLI is the default approach to using React Native. This ap

In this episode of React Native Radio Charles Max Wood interviews Hannah Howard at RxJS Live about her talk. Hannah is really enthusiastic about RxJS especially when it comes to frontend development. Her talk is about how to architect full-scale apps with RxJS. Hannah gives a brief summary of her talk. Charles having met Hanna previously at Code Beam asks her how functional programming and reactive programming work together in her mind. Hannah describes how she sees programming. Panelists Charles Max Wood Guest: Hannah Howard Sponsors Infinite Red G2i CacheFly Links https://www.rxjs.live/ RxJS Live Youtube Channel https://twitter.com/techgirlwonder https://www.facebook.com/ReactNativeRadio/ https://twitter.com/R_N_Radio

In this episode of React Native Radio the panel considers the roles of QA and development teams. Charles Max Wood and Josh Justice share their backgrounds in QA and development, this gives them a unique perspective, having seen it from both sides. They begin by discussing and defining some terms. Charles explains that most terms are defined more by an organization than the industry. The panel discusses testing tools like Cypress and Detox, explaining their uses and value. They define black box and gray box testing and consider the benefits of each testing type. Josh explains the value of manual testing and how that value may never be lost. They consider the strategy of relying on users to find bugs. They compare testing mobile and web development. They consider how the roles of QA and development overlap and the best ways to define the roles of each team. Charles recommends each organization sit down and clearly define these roles. Josh recommends clearly outlining where CI and CD come into play. The

In this episode of React Native Radio Charles Max Wood interviews James Smith, the co-founder, and CEO of Bugsnag. James gives Bugsnag’s background and explains what makes it different than other bug-finding tools. He shares statistics on how much bugs cost. Developers spend on average 17.3 hrs per week dealing with bad code, 85 billion dollars in GDP dollars are lost to bad code every year and most customers leave an app after two crashes, harming your brand. Chuck and James consider when and why customers leave reviews. They consider how reviews help in finding and fixing bugs. They discuss how helpful it would be if they could communicate with unhappy customers to help them find bugs. James explains how Bugsnag can help with this by replicating user interactions to find what steps led to a bug. James explains what to once all the data has been gathered and the best processes for actually fixing the bugs. This process stems on establishing ownership and identifying priority bugs. Although QAs and QEs a

In this episode of React Native Radio, panelists Josh Justice and Charles Max Wood interview Mitch Masia. He is a software engineer from Chicago and works with all things JavaScript, React, React Native, Node, and is currently working on a project to create a financial research platform. The product is called EEON. It is inspired by the lack of apps for people to easily research and make informed financial decisions when it comes to investing with all the amazing zero commission trading apps out there. They are looking to expand upon the information available within those apps to be able to give a rating system, real time visualizations, and data on financial statements. They discuss how this app is constructed and Mitch mentions how great Redis Pub/Sub is for real time functionality. He talks about how difficult it has been to work with multiple services and that recently he has condensed some of those services. React Native with Expo is what he is currently using on his frontend. Right now, iOS is the focus

In this episode of React Native Radio Josh Justice interviews Zain Sajjad. Zain leads the team of frontend developers at Peekaboo Guru. They use React on their web interfaces and React Native on their mobile interfaces. Zain and Josh discuss some of the work Zain is doing and overviews his recent blog post outlining best practices for React developers. Zain explains how smooth the transition was to React Native coming from React. They had a good knowledge of how React worked from their web applications which made learning React Native easy. Zain shares why they chose React Native, they wanted a quality frontend and a lot of code reusability across platforms. Josh and Zain consider some of the other benefits of using React and React Native, including maintaining the same mental model and libraries. Zain discusses their recent update and the Hermes engine. He explains how it makes apps more performant and with better execution. Josh and Zain discuss how they measure performance. Zain shares the tools they

In this week’s episode of React Native Radio Charles Max Wood interview Lucas Bento. Lucas has been working with React Native for around four years. He helped create and maintains Upgrade Helper. Upgrade Helper helps React Native developers when an automatic upgrade fails. In this episode, they talk about Upgrade Helper, React Native Doctor and open sourcing software. Upgrading React Native can be awful. Lucas explains how this process has become easier and now most problems happen with developers who are new to React Native. They are still working on ways to make upgrading more smooth. Charles shares his plans to build a mobile DevChat application with React Native. He asks Lucas for advice on how to update the template app he purchased in the past to help with this project. Lucas explains that it depends on what version the app is currently using. He recommends not skipping versions when updating, to run the upgrade command and check the app for errors. The panel discusses the common problems seen

In this episode of React Native Radio, Josh Justice interviews Calvin Yu. Calvin is a consultant mostly working with Ruby on Rails but also works with React Native and mobile development. He has quite the history of working with startups, all varying in size. Calvin shares what it was like working with startup companies. Calvin explains what you have to change mentally to work in a startup. First, you have to realize that you don’t have all the answers and that it takes a commitment. He also explains that because you don’t have all the answers you will make a mistake, which means you need to be able to learn from it and move on. Josh and Calvin share their thought on using risky or bleeding edge technologies in a startup. Calvin explains that when developers are looking to join a start-up they want to work in something new, exciting and a little risky. They consider the risks and the benefits, how new technologies could give a startup a leg up on the competition. Josh brings up a blog post titled “Choos