Issue 40 November 16th 2018

News

Release: React Native 0.57.5

A new release of React Native was announced, which fixes important issues such as new projects having issues with Xcode 10, and React 16 alpha dependencies.

Christoph Nakazawa joins the React Native team

Christoph is a well-recognized Engineering Manager at Facebook, known to have championed efforts towards Jest. He is now joining the React Native team, with the purpose of "making it awesome in open source". I, for one, am excited to see what Christoph has got up his sleeve!

Libraries & Tools

The Ultimate VSCode Setup for Front End/JS/React

Who doesn't love a list of awesome plugins to install to make your VSCode setup even smoother? Although I had most already installed, learned of a couple of nice plugins reading this article, check it out!

React Native Navigation solutions in 2018

Navigation has been a longstanding issue in React Native, with both native and JS implementations having tradeoffs. This thorough article by Adrien Thiéry goes through the current state of navigation solutions in React Native, how to use them, and how they stack up against each other. Very interesting read!

Open Source

react-native-hooks - React Native APIs turned into React Hooks for use in stateless React components

react-native-css-gradient - react-native-linear-gradient with css gradient support

react-native-gplaces

Latest Jobs

Software Engineer at Breathe Life (Montreal, Canada)

At Breathe Life, we’re building technology that helps people take control of their financial future so they can do what’s right for them, their loved ones and have peace of mind. Our platform helps them learn about financial products, identify the ones best suited for them, and make their purchase online when they’re ready. Breathe Life is shaping an industry that hasn’t changed in 100 years and having a massive impact in the process. Join us!

Design

Kill Your Personas

Personas are a typical design tool, and almost every product company uses them. In this article, the author suggests ditching them in favor of a more effective tool - persona spectrums. Take a read, and share with your designer friends!

Videos

Can it be done on React Native?

William Candillon has been making these awesome videos called "Can it be done on React Native", for a couple of months now, where he attempts to challenge the notion that some things can not be done in React Native, by tackling the hard stuff head on. Super fun to watch, don't forget to share it with your skeptical friends!

Comment

Hey friends!

It's been a little while, and a lot of things have been going on in the React and React Native communities, between React Hooks and Suspense, there's plenty to keep us busy!

This issue is packed with super interesting reads from the past few weeks, hope you enjoy them!

A little announcement on our side: we're looking for people interested in helping us out with this newsletter, so if you have some time to spare and an interest in React Native, shoot us a word at [email protected]

Cheers and have a great weekend!

Fun fact: did you know Amazon organizes its own internal React Native conference?

Engineering

Why React Hooks, and how did we even get here?

This interesting article explains where React Hooks came from, and how it compares to the "older ways" of sharing component logic. If you haven't heard of React Hooks just yet, you should check out Sophie Alpert and Dan Abramov's talk at React Conf 2018. This is a revolutionary addition to React, and although it is still in its experimental changes, I believe it will fundamentally change the way we write our React apps.

Manage global state with React Hooks

Another React Hooks read! Can you tell I'm a fan?

This write-up by Charles Stover attacks an interesting issue: dealing with global state using Hooks (as opposed to higher order components). Check it out if you want to dig deeper into Hooks.

React Native vs. Native

Infinite Red never disappoints, this is one of the best comparison articles I've read about whether you should learn React Native or Native development first, with a little intro into the React Native bridge to see just how native React Native really is.

What you need to know to start building mobile apps in React Native

If you're just starting out, this is a good write up on things that are good to know before starting to build a React Native app. There are many things on that list I wish I had known before I started by first app, and would have saved my team and I plenty of headaches!

Business

What I learned about procrastination while scaling my startup to 4.2 million users

Ayekin Tank is the founder of JotForm.com, notably known for scaling his company to a huge scale, while being entirely bootstrapped. In this blog post, Ayekin states that so-called "productivity hacks" don't work, and offers suggestions on how to face procrastination head on, starting with his own experience.