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Show HN: Fullstack React Native – A Project-Based Guide to Learning React Native

122 points by dabbott 9y ago

buf 9y ago
Is there a comparison on how well this does vs Udemy, reactnative.com or Facebook's own tutorial?
- dabbott 9y ago
  This is totally new so I don't think anybody has reviewed it yet... but: Facebook's own tutorial is quite good I think (caveat: I wrote some parts of it), so I would definitely recommend going through that first. It's a really great overview of most React Native concepts. This gives more in-depth and hands-on instructions. E.g. creating a project from scratch and building it to completion, one step at a time. reactnative.com is an aggregator of useful topics, news, and links (a few of which are tutorials), so it's a bit different, but also very useful when getting started.
  - samschooler 9y ago
    The think that always gets me with React Native is navigation. Do you have any best practices, libraries or articles to follow to do clean maintainable navigation?
    - dabbott 9y ago
      Not yet, but that's coming in a future update.
- com2kid 9y ago
  > Udemy Stephen Grider's courses on Udemy were good enough to get me going with my own app in just a week or so of video+coding. Went through all of his first and ~1/2 of his second course on React Native. My only complaint is that he doesn't do a great job explaining a lot of the underlying principles of React Native that well. Strange issues with View, intricate details of the Flex model, React-Native seems to have lots of edge cases around almost everything. Heck it took me the better part of three hours to get the keyboard so it wouldn't cover my input boxes[1]. But overall it does a good job getting started. Then again this is the same framework that has multiple Medium articles published about how to get an image to expand to the full screen width, with rather conflicting advice being given at times. If anything, React-Native is the best jobs creation program I have seen in a while, it has generated a lot of blog posts of people explaining how to do what should be basic things! :) All that said, if this book contains explanations of why things happen, I'd pick it up in a heartbeat. Unfortunately I can't tell that w/o giving my email. :/ [1]Facebook's component for this, KeyboardAvoidingView, is 90% undocumented. After a number of other issues, my final one was forgetting to call the magic UIManager.setLayoutAnimationEnabledExperimental(true) function, without which things just tend to Not Work on Android.
  - notheguyouthink 9y ago
    Do you have any comments on video courses that go into depth on UI design? I'm a backend engineer and while most of RN makes sense to me, flex box and ui tend to throw me for a loop. I should probably just find some flex box guides, as they'll likely cover most of it. Regardless, I figured it was worth asking you - since ui components with RN is my only trouble area currently.
    - com2kid 9y ago
      Flex Box is similar to a ton of other layout systems, many of which I've either used or written in the past. I have no idea why Flex Box feels so complicated. The fundamental idea is incredibly simple. I can't offer much help, I've just spent (too many) hours fiddling with styles until I kinda get an understanding, I keep inching forward. Super irritating given how simple the idea is in every other framework I've used it in.
      - notheguyouthink 9y ago
        I agree - it is simple, and I've taken courses/learnt it in the past, even. Yet, every time I go to apply it, I completely sit in puzzlement about my next action. I'm sure it simply has to do with practice. As a backend dev, I rarely touch frontend, so it's a mindset that I continually forget. Regardless, it's quite frustrating when I actually have to touch anything UI related. Sucks
desigooner 9y ago
I wish such sites would offer a direct link to download sample content without forcing users to enter an email address. You're never getting my actual email until I feel the book's good enough- why bother?!
- dabbott 9y ago
  I definitely hear you on this :P but it does help with conversion. A lot of people end up buying the book a few weeks/months later after we send an email about a new release.
  - rhizome 9y ago
    but it does help with conversion Well yeah. I mean, isn't it a conversion unto itself?
- jtchang 9y ago
  Because nowadays it is all about "growth hacking" and we are seeing the monster we've created.
- jsgo 9y ago
  I completely agree in that I don't like the practice either, but I will say that when I signed up when buying the original Fullstack React (for React proper) book, a lot of the emails were interesting pieces that were essentially supplemental to the book.
- GVIrish 9y ago
  I mean, you are getting free content in return though. I am very much against give-me-your-email-first designs that obfuscate what the actual product is or does until you fork over an email. But asking for an email address in a straightforward exchange for free content is not the worst thing.
hpyhpyjoyjoy87 9y ago
Love the cover! Makes me want to buy a physical book.
whoisjuan 9y ago
Hahahaha nice cover art. It's like the psychedelic version of an O’Reilly book.
russtrpkovski 9y ago
Would you recommend this book to a newbie trying to build an MVP?
- pan69 9y ago
  You mean "newbie" as in never programmed a single line of code before or "newbie" as in a programming background but just new to React Native? I recently started to play around with React Native since I wanted to make a specific app. I first learned React and Redux for the web and then applied that knowledge to React Native. You don't have to learn Redux though but if you want to build anything beyond trivial you will have to do state management so you might as well pick the most popular way of doing that. I've been at it for 7 or so weeks now (full-time) and I have a running iOS/Android app (this time also includes building an API the app talks to and an admin area for admins to login to for house keeping purposes). I still need to finish up "loads" of details but I'm over the major learning curve (I think). If this book would have been any help to me? Looking through the chapter topics, I think not. To me, the real useful information would be more about the differences and similarities in how to implement good UI/UX for both iOS and Android, generating the required certificates, publishing to the app stores etc. I have been developing software for 20+ years, if that makes a difference.
  - russtrpkovski 9y ago
    Thanks. I would say the former. I want to build a mobile app MVP but # of frameworks, languages out there can be daunting.
- MrAwesomeSauce 9y ago
  Co-author of the book here. We're writing it so that new newcomers to React can still pick up the fundamentals of the API while learning React Native at the same time. However, the content is geared towards developers who have at least a basic understanding of JavaScript, so you may need to pick up some of the core concepts of the language first before purchasing a book like this. With that being said, our first chapter is free and goes through building a stand-alone app from start to finish. You can definitely give that a shot first if you're still unsure :)
maxpupmax 9y ago
This is a great landing page, pricing scheme, launch, ect. – all for a book where they haven't finished writing it yet! Talk about validating demand. Would love to see them do an indiehacker interview after the fact...
ccheever 9y ago
This is great. The examples are really good.

122 points by dabbott 9y ago

buf 9y ago

Is there a comparison on how well this does vs Udemy, reactnative.com or Facebook's own tutorial?

dabbott 9y ago
This is totally new so I don't think anybody has reviewed it yet... but: Facebook's own tutorial is quite good I think (caveat: I wrote some parts of it), so I would definitely recommend going through that first. It's a really great overview of most React Native concepts. This gives more in-depth and hands-on instructions. E.g. creating a project from scratch and building it to completion, one step at a time. reactnative.com is an aggregator of useful topics, news, and links (a few of which are tutorials), so it's a bit different, but also very useful when getting started.
- samschooler 9y ago
  The think that always gets me with React Native is navigation. Do you have any best practices, libraries or articles to follow to do clean maintainable navigation?
  - dabbott 9y ago
    Not yet, but that's coming in a future update.
com2kid 9y ago
> Udemy Stephen Grider's courses on Udemy were good enough to get me going with my own app in just a week or so of video+coding. Went through all of his first and ~1/2 of his second course on React Native. My only complaint is that he doesn't do a great job explaining a lot of the underlying principles of React Native that well. Strange issues with View, intricate details of the Flex model, React-Native seems to have lots of edge cases around almost everything. Heck it took me the better part of three hours to get the keyboard so it wouldn't cover my input boxes[1]. But overall it does a good job getting started. Then again this is the same framework that has multiple Medium articles published about how to get an image to expand to the full screen width, with rather conflicting advice being given at times. If anything, React-Native is the best jobs creation program I have seen in a while, it has generated a lot of blog posts of people explaining how to do what should be basic things! :) All that said, if this book contains explanations of why things happen, I'd pick it up in a heartbeat. Unfortunately I can't tell that w/o giving my email. :/ [1]Facebook's component for this, KeyboardAvoidingView, is 90% undocumented. After a number of other issues, my final one was forgetting to call the magic UIManager.setLayoutAnimationEnabledExperimental(true) function, without which things just tend to Not Work on Android.
- notheguyouthink 9y ago
  Do you have any comments on video courses that go into depth on UI design? I'm a backend engineer and while most of RN makes sense to me, flex box and ui tend to throw me for a loop. I should probably just find some flex box guides, as they'll likely cover most of it. Regardless, I figured it was worth asking you - since ui components with RN is my only trouble area currently.
  - com2kid 9y ago
    Flex Box is similar to a ton of other layout systems, many of which I've either used or written in the past. I have no idea why Flex Box feels so complicated. The fundamental idea is incredibly simple. I can't offer much help, I've just spent (too many) hours fiddling with styles until I kinda get an understanding, I keep inching forward. Super irritating given how simple the idea is in every other framework I've used it in.
    - notheguyouthink 9y ago
      I agree - it is simple, and I've taken courses/learnt it in the past, even. Yet, every time I go to apply it, I completely sit in puzzlement about my next action. I'm sure it simply has to do with practice. As a backend dev, I rarely touch frontend, so it's a mindset that I continually forget. Regardless, it's quite frustrating when I actually have to touch anything UI related. Sucks

desigooner 9y ago

I wish such sites would offer a direct link to download sample content without forcing users to enter an email address. You're never getting my actual email until I feel the book's good enough- why bother?!

dabbott 9y ago
I definitely hear you on this :P but it does help with conversion. A lot of people end up buying the book a few weeks/months later after we send an email about a new release.
- rhizome 9y ago
  but it does help with conversion Well yeah. I mean, isn't it a conversion unto itself?
jtchang 9y ago
Because nowadays it is all about "growth hacking" and we are seeing the monster we've created.
jsgo 9y ago
I completely agree in that I don't like the practice either, but I will say that when I signed up when buying the original Fullstack React (for React proper) book, a lot of the emails were interesting pieces that were essentially supplemental to the book.
GVIrish 9y ago
I mean, you are getting free content in return though. I am very much against give-me-your-email-first designs that obfuscate what the actual product is or does until you fork over an email. But asking for an email address in a straightforward exchange for free content is not the worst thing.

hpyhpyjoyjoy87 9y ago

Love the cover! Makes me want to buy a physical book.

whoisjuan 9y ago

Hahahaha nice cover art. It's like the psychedelic version of an O’Reilly book.

russtrpkovski 9y ago

Would you recommend this book to a newbie trying to build an MVP?

pan69 9y ago
You mean "newbie" as in never programmed a single line of code before or "newbie" as in a programming background but just new to React Native? I recently started to play around with React Native since I wanted to make a specific app. I first learned React and Redux for the web and then applied that knowledge to React Native. You don't have to learn Redux though but if you want to build anything beyond trivial you will have to do state management so you might as well pick the most popular way of doing that. I've been at it for 7 or so weeks now (full-time) and I have a running iOS/Android app (this time also includes building an API the app talks to and an admin area for admins to login to for house keeping purposes). I still need to finish up "loads" of details but I'm over the major learning curve (I think). If this book would have been any help to me? Looking through the chapter topics, I think not. To me, the real useful information would be more about the differences and similarities in how to implement good UI/UX for both iOS and Android, generating the required certificates, publishing to the app stores etc. I have been developing software for 20+ years, if that makes a difference.
- russtrpkovski 9y ago
  Thanks. I would say the former. I want to build a mobile app MVP but # of frameworks, languages out there can be daunting.
MrAwesomeSauce 9y ago
Co-author of the book here. We're writing it so that new newcomers to React can still pick up the fundamentals of the API while learning React Native at the same time. However, the content is geared towards developers who have at least a basic understanding of JavaScript, so you may need to pick up some of the core concepts of the language first before purchasing a book like this. With that being said, our first chapter is free and goes through building a stand-alone app from start to finish. You can definitely give that a shot first if you're still unsure :)

maxpupmax 9y ago

This is a great landing page, pricing scheme, launch, ect. – all for a book where they haven't finished writing it yet! Talk about validating demand. Would love to see them do an indiehacker interview after the fact...

ccheever 9y ago

This is great. The examples are really good.