Quora Co-Founder Charlie Cheever Is Back in the Startup Game | Hacker News Reader

Quora Co-Founder Charlie Cheever Is Back in the Startup Game

fortune.com

18 pointscocoflunchy18 comments

What I'm working on -- along with a couple other people -- is Exponent, a way to make native iOS and Android apps by writing them just once in just JavaScript. It's based on React Native. https://getexponent.com/

We made a 2 minute video overview about what we're doing here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQI9aUlouMI

Never understood the love for Quora, just seemed to spam Google search results acting like it would provide an answer then forcing you to sign up to actually get what it promised.

I think it's because if you do sign up you get access to the best answers to common tech, higher edu, and startup questions by predominantly people with relevant public credentials.

It's no better or worse than asking questions on HN or Reddit or any other forum, despite what their marketing says.

Or did I miss the sarcasm?

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/quora-share/

Gives Quora a much better UX.

I just always see the stupidest questions asked on Quora, like askReddit just 2x worse

I treat quora links as spam. I've never seen anythign useful there, just obfuscated answers.

Quora, like Twitter, is one of those information networks that are what you make of them. You need to put in the effort to pick interests and people to follow. The service is pretty "dumb" until you have it dialed in. Once you've got it where you want it, it can provide hours of fun or quasi-informative reading every week.

how much does a fluff article like this cost? might need it when i enter the startup game.

With such cynicism who knows, they might charge more for different people.

This guy has credentials from a previous startup, hence why an article like this might create excitement for some.

For a project that is like pre packaging modules, I think that an article like that is a bit too much. We are in a bubble, why add more hot air?

They are pre packaging some React Native modules. I guess there is space for that, but I don't how large it is. For RN developers, I guess that github/npm already has similar modules. Is it free software?

In a related matter: Has anyone built a production app with Exponent JS and lived to tell about the experience?

Actually I was wondering what Exponent JS brings since its based on React JS which itself enables to make mobile apps in js/React.

You can think of it as kind of like Rails for React Native--Exponent takes care of a bunch of things for you that are a pain in the butt to setup, like push notifications. Facebook login, etc.

Here's a 2 minute video that I think explains what we're doing pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQI9aUlouMI

the biggest and best example right now is the Android version of Li.st. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=st.li.listapp&...

In general, people have been really happy using Exponent so far. It doesn't work for all use cases yet since we are still beefing up the roster of native modules that are included, but you can do most of the stuff that most apps need already, and we're adding more every day.

As a native android/ios engineer, that's great to see cross-platform tools like this create an app that's got decent traction. My biggest gripe though is there hasn't been a x-platform tool to get the native feel completely right. Obviously your SDK is going through its iterations to refine this, but actions such as the pull-to-refresh widget flicker twice on some screens. There'll be some screens w/ the ListView/RecyclerView where when you scroll to the bottom there'll be inconsistencies w/ the pull-effect (sometimes it will show, sometimes it won't). The alert-popups feel kind of awkward.

I'm super picky when it comes to UI/UX which is why I still prefer native on both platforms. But keep up the good work!

I think there have been quite a few attempts now at a cross-platform mobile framework which compiles to native while allowing you to work in some higher language. Am I wrong? If not, what sets Exponent apart?

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