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htormeyon Much ado about iOS app architecture

One big problem with using interface builder to build UI is code review & working on UI in parallel.

This isn’t an issue in smaller apps but if you work on a larger team (5+) it becomes a real pain.

I really wish that Apple had taken the approach that Google did with using xml (or something humanly readable) to describe the UIs generated by visual tools.

htormeyon Ask HN: What to do as a back-end dev and with many app ideas but can't do UX?

Personally I’d go on fiverr.com & find someone to do a basic design for your project ($100-200 if you keep it simple). Then find another person to convert it to html/css ($15-$80) then wire that up.

I’ve done the above before for my projects. The trick is to keep your design requests very simple and reference existing websites as an example. Also hire someone who is in a similar time zone to you.

If the project works & start making money you can go find someone who is more expensive to make it look nicer. Design is an iterative process.

htormeyon Twitter says it could turn first-ever profit

Here ya go:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-17/what-is-t...

htormeyon Facebook's Aggressive Moves on Startups Threaten Innovation

Not trying to take away from your point but I think the company that made TBH were trying to make a hit app since 2013 when they did their seed round:

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/tbh

It took nearly 4 years of probably not making much before they hit pay dirt with TBH.

htormeyon Facebook Shouldn’t Be Allowed to Buy Tbh

FB thinks about apps like tv channels. If you look at the top 10 free apps all of them are owned by either Facebook, google or Snapchat (they own Bitmoji).

TBH was the only app in the top 10 not owned by one of these 3 so the acquired it.

TBH could be a feature of either Facebook or Instagram in the same way that most of the history channels content could be just shows on other tv channels.

These things exist or will continue to exist as separate entities because it’s more profitable that way.

htormeyon Are you built to be an employee?

I think a better question would be are you built to run your own business? Assuming the answer to the preceding question is yes a good follow up question would be what kind of business do you want to run?

I quit my well paying corporate Job about 2 years ago to go work on my own software product. I spent about 6 months working on this part time while doing contracting then ended up focusing full time on my own consulting/contracting business.

Along the way I have made a number of mistakes and met with people in similar situations. Here are some random observations from my journey so far:

- It's very easy to spend a lot of time building a software product that nobody really wants (Duh).

- It's really easy to spend a lot of time building a software product that makes a small amount of money but not enough to justify your time.

- It takes a long time to build a SASS business, budget at least 24 months. If you are later on in your career, 24 months of little to no money is a big opportunity cost.

- Contracting/Consulting is at least 50% about selling & marketing yourself effectively.

- It's really hard to work on a product part time even if you can devote about 2-3 days a week to it. Context switching costs a lot.

- Finding a cofounder who complements your skillset, who you can trust and is actually willing to go all in for 12 months is hard.

I think a lot of HN people conflate starting a company with coming up with a brilliant new product or service and building it around that. If you are at all entrepreneurial but lacking ideas, it might be worth your while doing a little contracting to see what it's like. Doing so might even provide you with some inspiration.

htormeyon Facebook acquires anonymous teen compliment app tbh, will let it run

Oh so how do you know that? Did they publish some article stating a change in control?

htormeyon Facebook acquires anonymous teen compliment app tbh, will let it run

This article is dated and I’ve never used Onavo myself but I think the pitch is it saves you money on your data plan:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.imore.com/onavo-app-claims-...

Teenagers are pretty cheap so I can see the appeal if that’s still true.

htormeyon Facebook acquires anonymous teen compliment app tbh, will let it run

This is a really good point. I don't think this is necessarily a bad acquisition at all. Onavo is basically Facebooks eye of sauron:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo

TBH has been in the top 10 free apps for a few weeks now. FB has a good track record of buying small teams with good engagement numbers and letting them run themselves (Whatsapp/Instagram).

I'm sure Facebook looked at their numbers via Onavo and decided they were on a pretty good trajectory.

Also, it should be noted that TBH doesn't even have an Android app yet.

The question now is will TBH turn out to be more of a draw with friends (flash in the pan game) or have staying power like Bitmoji does.

Bitmoji was purchased by Snap Inc for around 100 million about a year ago. It has managed to consistently stay in the top 10 free apps since then:

https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/29/snapmoji/

htormeyon The Rise of the Rich Renter

This plus rent control is very similar to my situation in San Francisco.

The only thing which would change this is if I had kids.

htormeyon The Rise of the Rich Renter

If you are in an apartment with rent control it really changes the rent/buy equation.

I’ve lived in a two bedroom rent controlled apartment in San Francisco for the last 7 years. I pay significantly below market rate for rent. I also have enough to afford a down payment on a house here.

Their is no incentive for me to purchase a house unless I lose my rent controlled apartment and even then I probably wouldn’t buy. I know many of my peers who are in similar situations. I’d say the same is true of NYC.

htormeyon Why many developers still prefer Objective-C to Swift

Is this still the case with Swift 4? Swift had lots of issues as of the 2016 wwdc (language changes breaking third party libraries, barely working tools) however swift 4 seems to be not nearly as bad. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts.

htormeyon Initial experience creating cross-platform apps with Flutter and Dart

I think the article would have been much better if the author had left out the section about RN. Failing that I would have liked to see him dig into why RN was slow for his use case and what he tried to do to fix theses issues.

"While it uses the same React paradigm, there’s still a lot of differences.It seems performance is reduced significantly as your application and the react framework is controlling all the high level rendering functions from within a JavaScript control thread."

It really seems like this person didn't spend a lot of time looking into performance when assessing React Native. Facebook have some really nice docs on this:

https://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/performance.htm...

They have a whole section on how to handle performance for user interactions/animations/etc which is well worth reading. Many RN related performance issues boil down to not being mindful of how javascript interacts with the native bridge. Tal Kol from Wix wrote a really great article about this, which you can find here:

https://hackernoon.com/moving-beyond-animations-to-user-inte...

I'm sure Flutter/Dart are great tools. It's just a little odd to see someone who know's React dismiss RN off handedly for performance reasons without making much of an effort to read the developer docs.

htormeyon Zucktown, USA

http://www.businessinsider.com/employee-retention-rate-top-t...

Matches my experience at FB & Apple. I spent about 2 years at each.

htormeyon VCs are suing the US for delay of immigration program

Sure, Stanford, Harvard & many top tier universities provide financial aid. I think that's awesome and to be encouraged. Getting into those institutions or being even aware of them is another matter. The disadvantages that many American's face start way downstream in high school, etc.

If you don't have parents who have gone to college before or go to a school with good teachers, you probably won't even know to apply to a top tier school.

A common theme that I have seen amongst my friends who have gone to Stanford/Berkeley/etc is that their parents had them doing extracurricular activities from a very young age to pad their entrance letters. Poorer families, have less resources and hence less time to engage in activities like this.

Just getting into Stanford or a top US college requires an incredible amount of work above and beyond good grades.

I have a very good friend who charge's $200 an hour to put together college application letters for top schools.

Income inequality in the USA is a huge disadvantage that many Americans face.

I'm not saying that income inequality is not an issue many immigrants don't face. I'm just particularly aware of it coming from a country (Ireland) that has good social benefits, like free healthcare, educations, etc. I think these things put me at an advantage compared to what many of my American peers had to go through.

htormeyon VCs are suing the US for delay of immigration program

For those not in the know, here is the definition of an O Visa is:

"An O visa is a classification of non-immigrant temporary worker visa granted by the United States to an alien "who possesses extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics, or who has a demonstrated record of extraordinary achievement in the motion picture or television industry and has been recognized nationally or internationally for those achievements," "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_visa

I don't think this is quite as easy to obtain as the parent implies as you need to have a reputation & have money to pull it off. Not just any rich person will be able to do this without spending a bunch of time cultivating the former.

The people I know who have gotten this visa had quite a long history of published (news papers, journals, etc) achievements.

It was also very stressful for them as at any stage in the process the government could decide that their achievements were not significant enough and pull the plug on their application.

htormeyon VCs are suing the US for delay of immigration program

" Someone living here starts off in a much better position than any foreign entrepreneur. "

I don't think you can make a blanket statement like that. I come from Ireland where I received a 4 year degree in CS for free. Most of the Americans I worked with over the years are saddled with huge amounts of college debt. This is a massive advantage in my favor.

Having to spend 4-6 years waiting for a green card so I can start my own company is a massive disadvantage. Having to deal with the annoying vagaries of the US immigration system just to get a job is also a massive disadvantage.

Coming from a country that has good free high school education is a massive advantage compared to most places in the USA.

Having parents who are financially well off and can support you while you are in school is a massive advantage. Having parents who went to university and can tell you the difference between schools or guide you through the byzantine application processes are massive advantages.

htormeyon Ask HN: Companies who adopted React Native over a year ago, do you regret it?

Thanks for this. I'm still relatively new to the Javascript world (mainly native developer) and I've only just started using flow.

Could you tell me a bit more about the following points:

* more definitions (This cannot be overstated; the gap is wide)

and

* great compiler

I'd love to hear more about this and or read some good articles comparing flow to typescript.

htormeyon Ask HN: Companies who adopted React Native over a year ago, do you regret it?

Great answer! Lots of food for thought. I'd love to hear more about any problems you have encountered with RxJS & RxJava.

htormeyon Ask HN: Companies who adopted React Native over a year ago, do you regret it?

I agree, accessibility is important and in many countries required by law. However using React Native Navigation can be quite a lot of work for a shop that only has JS dev's who've never done native. Using React Native Navigation (or any native dependency) also has implications for your CI system, debugging and over the air updates.

Also you can make an app that has no accessibility problems using React Navigation, you just need to be careful about scenarios where you might have a deep stack. I.e during signup or something that requires several screens on top of one another.

Here is a summary of the bug:

https://react-native.canny.io/feature-requests/p/navigator-b...

It's painful but possible to work around these issues using React Navigation.

htormeyon Ask HN: Companies who adopted React Native over a year ago, do you regret it?

I recently gave a talk at Chain React in Portland (first ever React Native only conference) where I compared these two nav stacks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFyaj5HmMEY&t=1059s

The situation with navigation and React Native is a bit of a mess right now.

Basically all navigation stacks can be broken down into two categories, those that are native (i.e built on top of the OS's existing navigation stack) and those that are not (pure javascript, emulates what the native stack does).

Examples of Native navigation stacks:

-> React Native Navigation (wix)

-> Native Navigation (Airbnb)

Examples of Javascript navigation stacks:

-> React Navigation

-> React Native Router Flux

-> React Router Native

An example app I wrote with React Navigation + Redux:

https://github.com/hgale/ReactNavigationDemo

Same app but built with React Native Navigation + redux:

https://github.com/hgale/ReactNativeNavigationDemo

The main differences are that the native nav stacks have better performance, stuff like accessibility works right out of the box and they work the same way that the underlying native system works.

The main downside to using Native navigation stacks right now is that setting then up & upgrading them can be a real pain. It can also require native knowledge when things go wrong.

I would recommend staying with react navigation (Javascript based nav stack) unless you absolutely need some feature from one of these native nav stacks.

It's going to be a lot easier to upgrade and you won't run into issues doing over the air updates with your production apps.

It's also the one that Facebook promotes in their docs:

https://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/navigation.html

Right now both React Native Navigation and React Navigation are under heavy development. No matter which one you choose, budget for some pain in the next year when upgrading.

htormeyon Ask HN: Companies who adopted React Native over a year ago, do you regret it?

Great answer, thank you so much for writing it. Given all of the con's, would you advise building an app from scratch with ReasonML?

My main hesitation with stuff like this & Clojure is that the learning curve for React Native + the JS ecosystem is already pretty steep. Do I want to add another layer into the mix? For me personally, it would have to come with a big return on investment to justify the cost. I feel it would have to offer more than just an incremental improvement over flow/typescript.

An example: I'm considering synching some time into learning RxJS & ReactiveSwift. My reasoning is that Reactive programming helps eliminate certain types of bugs and makes it much easier to chain events together in a complex app.

htormeyon Ask HN: Companies who adopted React Native over a year ago, do you regret it?

This is a really solid answer. The point about ProGuard can especially bite you if you are adding React Native to an existing application.

Also, upgrading native dependencies in React Native is a really big pain point. The quality of Native modules also varies enormously.

An example react-native-camera:

https://github.com/lwansbrough/react-native-camera

Works well on iOS but has all sorts of performance problems on Android devices. Even newer ones.

One question I have is why did you prefer Typescript over flow? I have just started using the latter and I would be curious to hear your thoughts on the matter.

I'd also love to hear why ReasonML is good.

htormeyon Ask HN: Companies who adopted React Native over a year ago, do you regret it?

I'm a native iOS developer who does a lot of React Native consulting. Earlier in the year I gave a talk on the pro's and cons of React Native which you can watch here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ4zQWgajBg&t=746s

The main reasons I got into React Native was a combination of frustration with the state of Swift last WWDC and an opportunity to try it out with a client who just had a React Web team.

I don't regret the decision at all. If you are thinking about using React Native in a project here are some things to consider:

Maybe we should use React Native:

- We know JS / React

- We have lots of web developers but few mobile

- Our design is brand-focused

- We're willing to invest in RN

- We want to get into OSS

- We want OTA code updates

Or maybe we shouldn't:

- We don't know JS / React

- We already have an iOS team and an Android team

- Our designs are heavily platform-specific

- We don't have the time or money for an RN team / OSS

Pros:

- Cross-platform

- Performant, native feel (with some effort)

- Great developer experience

- Push updates over-the-air

- Strong community

- Backed by Facebook

Cons:

- Early

- Unstable (bugs, APIs)

- Ecosystem not fully developed

- Polished apps are high effort

- You may need native code (so JS + Obj-C + Java)

If you are a fully native shop, with no JS dev's that use React, it doesn't make all that much sense to rewrite your app using React Native.

If you have no native team, are familiar with React, then React Native makes a lot of sense.

If you are are a company with native apps and a web team that knows React then using React Native inside your existing app for growth, etc, makes a lot of sense.

Going all in on React Native is a big investment and I wouldn't recommend it for many use cases (multimedia, etc). Right now it definitely has some rough edges (navigation, upgrading versions, etc) but it can dramatically increase the productivity of your front end teams.

htormeyon Mastodon is not Twitter

I agree. It’s a double edged sword. I can see scenarios where I’d want something like this.

htormeyon Decentralized Social Networks Won't Work

Maybe. I personally just use Whatsapp and messenger group chats to communicate with my family/friends.

htormeyon Mastodon is not Twitter

Yep, fair points. To clarify, I think Mastodon is really cool and a big step in the right direction. I don't mean to come across as overly critical.

I do feel the second issue he raises is still valid. re-following is a lot of friction, even in a federated system, albeit less so than moving from one centralized service to another. It would be nice if Mastodon provided some way of altering users when someone switches to a new instance.

htormeyon Mastodon is not Twitter

Mastodon really isn’t a replacement for Twitter. The original Wired article did a poor job of critiquing it.

I think this guy does a much better job of critiqueing Mastodon than the article linked in the parent post.

https://hackernoon.com/mastodon-is-dead-in-the-water-888c10e...

Key points:

“The foremost problem is that federation is a lie. Well, it’s partially a lie. The benefits described above do work; if you send a message to anyone at @username@custom.website, it will be delivered to them. But if @custom.website is a domain that mastodon.social deems inappropriate, replies from that users on that domain don’t show up in your notifications or on your feed, unless you explicitly follow them. So if you’re having a conversation with your friend, @person@custom.website, and another user from custom.website wants to chime in, they will be invisible to you.”

And

“Suppose you’re a semi-famous content publisher. You have 10,000 followers on Twitter, whom you converse with regularly and have a large history of communications with. If you decide to switch networks to something like Mastodon, you immediately come into contact with the Hardest Problem of Identity on the Internet, which is that your social graph is not portable between platforms.”

I feel these are two very important limitations to understand about Mastodon.

I see Mastodon as basically Wordpress for people who want a twitter like experience off of twitter. Aka niche communities.

htormeyon Eaze, cannabis delivery company, raises 27M

Distribution. Many cities have different rules about if and where you can place a shop that can sells Marijuana. The corner store beside your house is not going to be selling weed anytime soon. Hence delivery is very handy.

htormeyon Eaze, cannabis delivery company, raises 27M

In the case of eaze, marijuana is not legal federally so you can’t use traditional postage or banks that cross state lines.