My Initiation Into Mobile Application Development with React Native

I’m sorry to admit that it’s taken me over a year since graduating from Makers to actually get my teeth into mobile development. Now, to be fair, my wife and I have had a baby in that time which does turn your world upside down for a while. But still, a year is a long time.

Around 4 weeks ago, I finally started making my first serious attempt to write a mobile app. And it’s been a fairly labour intensive experience with lots of back pain and sleepless nights.

The reasons for this, not including having a young child, are two-fold: First, historically, I’ve always hated Javascript and had as little to do with it as I could get away with. This, I see, is not a very healthy attitude to have towards Javascript. It’s too useful. It can do too much that PHP can’t. And now that I’ve immersed myself in it for 4 solid weeks, I can see that. And I actually rather like it.

The second reason for not getting involved in mobile app development earlier is that applications are just that – small programs – and quite a bit more complex than websites. Which means being a dab hand at building websites does not easily transfer to building mobile apps. They are quite different animals.

I think it’s been a good decision all-in-all. Between PHP and React Native, I think I’m well equipped to build almost anything my mind can think up.

The great thing about React Native is that it works on both Apple and Android devices which means you can build apps for both the App and Play stores with a single codebase. For a lone coder like myself, that’s important. It would be a major problem if I had to add new features or functionality to two different code bases just to keep what’s supposed to be the same app the same for all users.

I’ll definitely update this blog when I have my first app on the App and Play stores!

I’m sorry to admit that it’s taken me over a year since graduating from Makers to actually get my teeth into mobile development. Now, to be fair, my wife and I have had a baby in that time which does turn your world upside down for a while. But still, a year is a long…