TJ_VANTOLL:
Hey everybody and welcome to another episode of React Roundup. I am your host today TJ Vantolle and with me on the panel I have Paige Neidringhouse.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Hey everyone.
TJ_VANTOLL:
and Jack Harrington.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Hey everybody!
TJ_VANTOLL:
And our special guest today, we have Raphael. Raphael, welcome to the show. Why don't you tell people your full name, first of all, because we're having trouble pronouncing it. And also a little bit about yourself, who you are, why you're famous, all those good sorts of things.
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
Yes, my full name is Uluwashiwun Rafael Afolayan. I'm a software engineer. I've been doing React Native for close to four years now. Before that, I've gone Ionic and used to call myself a full start developer. Yes, I did full start using MiniLaravel. My backend, Stark, and UJS on the frontend before I moved on to Ionic as a mobile developer. And after I used Ionic for about six months to a year, I knew how to find something better. So I discovered this shiny framework called React Native. I built a test project with it, and I've not gone back ever since.
TJ_VANTOLL:
Awesome. So there are a number of things that we could dive in to their different frameworks, a bunch of different stuff. I know what we wanted to talk about a little bit just to kick things off is you also have some experience with React Native and Firebase. So
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Ooh!
TJ_VANTOLL:
why don't we start there and then we can move on to Ionic and some other stuff. So maybe you could start by just telling people, for listeners that don't know what... What is Firebase? Why you sort of got involved using it, what it does, those sorts of things to kick us off.
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
Yes, Firebase is a backend architecture by Google that gives you the power of a backend developer without having to know so much about backend developments in itself. So with Firebase, you can build projects from ground up using already existing architecture. For example, there's databases, there's push notifications, there's so much more. that Firebase offers you as a developer that you would have to do maybe in months using a package framework like Laravel, Python, even Node.js that Firebase already provides for you that you can just tap into and get stuff running quickly.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
So what kind of services does Firebase handle for us? It handles
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
Yeah,
JACK_HERRINGTON:
database
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
so
JACK_HERRINGTON:
and...
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
there's so many things that Firebase provides. The most popular is authentication, which I've been helping a lot quite recently in some of the projects that I've worked on with Firebase. We have authentication built in already. You've got real-time databases that lets you build things like maps, navigational tools, In addition to that, we have the very popular Firestore database. It's SQL or MongoDB on steroids. I mean, that's how I like to term it. Apart from that, you've got Firebase Analytics, which of course is really just Google Analytics and lets you monitor events and usage of your products. In addition to that, there's Firebase tools that let you deploy mobile and web projects. We have Firebase hosting. We have Firebase storage as well, which is something that I really come to enjoy. It's a quick S3 bucket or so, but using the same Firebase architecture that you have. There's so much more, but those are the main tools that are... that I use in my day-to-day activities as a developer.
TJ_VANTOLL:
Gotcha. So what brought you to Firebase? Like why, what sort of things are you building? Why did you pick it? Cause there's also other tools that do this sort of thing as well. So I'm curious, like what about Firebase that made you think it was the best pick for what you're building?
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
Yes, so this would be my main project at the moment. It's called mytherapist.ng. It's a therapy app that I've been working on for over a year now, that lets you book a therapist from the comfort of your phone. You can talk to your therapist via video, voice, and text chat. And with the... Part of the way you get to text a therapist, I didn't want to spend so much time building that because there was so many things to focus on. And I had alternatives, of course. I had libraries and I had... I want to record them again. I had boilerplates that I could type into. There was StreamChats, there was Algorad Texts, SMS, and everything that I could easily use. But I found out that because of getting started with some of these thought party texts or chatting tools was not something I was ready to start bearing at the moment. I wanted something that was free. that I could easily get up and running with. And I came across Firebase as a way to quickly read the chat app. So I mean, if you Google React Native or React Chat app, most of the documentation and the tutorials that you find use Firebase. And I thought, why go so far when there's something already existing that I can tap into? So I looked at the Firebase docs. It seemed really easy to use. There was the thought of something that was also real-time. I did not want to have to build a WebRTC system on my own, and Firebase real-time database provided just what I needed. So, yeah, I gave it a spin, and I was able to get something up and running in about two, three hours. And, yes, it's not needed any maintainers or anything of the sort since then.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but is Firebase a Google tool or is somebody else the creator of it?
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
So from my knowledge, it was built by some guys. I cannot tell you their names right now, but it was actually bought by Google at the beginning of 2013 and 2014.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
it. Okay, that's awesome. So you said that you were creating a therapy app. How did you decide that that was something that you wanted to build or that you needed to build for your community?
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
Yes, so during COVID, there was this... this really strong need for people to begin to take care of their mental health. There were so many people going through depression, I lost a family member and there was so much going on regarding my mental health personally. I had friends that were in horrible positions because of the pandemic and immediately after the pandemic we had a very popular event that happened in Nigeria. It was a riot against police brutality. in Tampon I think around the same time as the Black Lives Matter protest. Yeah, and there were so many people that were depressed, so many people that were going through day to day anxiety, including myself, as a result of those two events. And I, of course, tried to look for help. I tried to reach out to therapists that I knew would be around me. But there was this problem of I had to know somebody who could recommend a therapist to me. There was no way I could go to search for a therapist and Talk to a therapist There's something in the US called better help that I tried to use but you know, it's it's really hard talking to someone Who doesn't understand what's going on in my country? So
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Mm-hmm.
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
I Contributed a directory where anybody could just go to check out for a therapist that meets their needs in terms of maybe race, ethnicity, and so many things. And I enlisted the help of a few friends of mine who were also engineers and designers, and they loved the idea. It was something that they wanted to contribute to as well. So we got started, I think, in late 2020. We did the branding and everything for the project, but... there was the problem of funding to actually get it to scale because there was a lot of work that needed to be done. Not even on the tech side, because I had that covered already, but in terms of branding, in terms of reaching out to therapists, in terms of finding these people and creating this sort of marketplace where everybody could just go to. So the project didn't kick start until late 2021. where I met my co-founder, who with density was my therapist. So I met her and we are actually when you're using
JACK_HERRINGTON:
That's
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
React-NC.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Andy.
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
So there's
JACK_HERRINGTON:
It's good to know to have somebody who's
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
a package
JACK_HERRINGTON:
in the field,
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
called React-NC.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
right? Obviously,
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Mm-hmm.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
you're you're handling the tech. They're handling the the
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
therapy.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
brain tech. There we go. Exactly.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
That is so cool. OK, so I'm really curious about the tech for this. So you mentioned that you'd used Ionic in the past. Were you originally going to try and use Ionic for this, or did you just start right out of the gate with React Native? And why?
TJ_VANTOLL:
Can
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Hmm.
TJ_VANTOLL:
you say the name one more time? Can you say the name one more time of what you're trying to connect to? I did not, I did not hear you. Dial up flow. Interesting.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Yeah, I've never heard
TJ_VANTOLL:
And the
JACK_HERRINGTON:
of that.
TJ_VANTOLL:
idea is, oh, dialogue flow. Okay. Is that, so is that for chat basically for like. Okay.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Oh, yeah, I was gonna wonder if there's an AI angle. Yes, the AI
TJ_VANTOLL:
Yeah, yeah.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
angle. Hello.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Mm-hmm. Thanks.
TJ_VANTOLL:
So to bring our topics together, then you're using Firebase, you're using React Native. Is the integration then, I'm assuming Firebase has different SDKs that you can use for different platforms. Is that basically the process of getting it into a React Native app?
JACK_HERRINGTON:
How do you find it worked from a scaling perspective? Did you run into any scaling issues as you added more customers onto your Firebase instance?
TJ_VANTOLL:
Yeah, it sounds right. I do remember that Firebase, when I've looked into it before, its free tier is surprisingly generous. I don't know how well it scales into, like, once you're building real apps, if it gets super expensive. But I do remember for just tinkering, it's kind of amazing what they let you do for free.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Yeah, 200 concurrent connections is pretty
TJ_VANTOLL:
That's
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
sweet actually. That's
TJ_VANTOLL:
quite
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
a good
TJ_VANTOLL:
a bit.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
size.
TJ_VANTOLL:
Yeah.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Yeah.
TJ_VANTOLL:
is going so good.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
I know, I wanted to hear what happened. You're on mute, Jack.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
my bad. Yeah, I was kind of hoping that we got that full quality recording on the other side because there's definitely some breakups but
TJ_VANTOLL:
I think those
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Mm-hmm.
TJ_VANTOLL:
smaller ones would have come through fine. This one, however, seems slightly more catastrophic, but we'll
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Yeah!
TJ_VANTOLL:
see.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Uhhh...
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Yeah, I wonder if his internet connection just dropped.
TJ_VANTOLL:
Yeah, I'd be curious too. It sounds like they're not quite big enough, but I'd really be interested to hear somebody running at a decent scale on Firebase. That's the only thing that scared me before is like, well, with any of these things, right, you get these sliders and their pricing page, but like, it's almost impossible to make that real, right? Like
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Mm-hmm.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Mm-hmm.
TJ_VANTOLL:
it's
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Right.
TJ_VANTOLL:
like, Oh, it's 0.026 per
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Yeah,
TJ_VANTOLL:
gigabytes.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
right. What does
TJ_VANTOLL:
Like,
JACK_HERRINGTON:
that mean? I don't know.
TJ_VANTOLL:
like
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
I have
TJ_VANTOLL:
I,
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
no
TJ_VANTOLL:
how do
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
idea
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Yeah.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
what that
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Right.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
equates
TJ_VANTOLL:
what
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
to,
TJ_VANTOLL:
it,
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
yeah.
TJ_VANTOLL:
right.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
And also,
TJ_VANTOLL:
If my
JACK_HERRINGTON:
like,
TJ_VANTOLL:
app
JACK_HERRINGTON:
depends
TJ_VANTOLL:
group.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
on your record size and stuff like that. Like, yeah, then the nature of the database is this kind of like columnar database where, you know, you're going to get these big ass records because you're going to have you're not going to do any joins, you know? And
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Yeah.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
so, you know, transit these big records across. And so.
TJ_VANTOLL:
I
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Mm-hmm.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
But
TJ_VANTOLL:
remember
JACK_HERRINGTON:
that
TJ_VANTOLL:
we
JACK_HERRINGTON:
being
TJ_VANTOLL:
hit.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
said, I've heard companies do real well with Firebase.
TJ_VANTOLL:
Yeah, like in like decently sized apps too. All right.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Okay.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
mean startups, you know, who can start like 999 a month or whatever sort of thing. They do pretty
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Yeah,
JACK_HERRINGTON:
well on it
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
I'd be very curious to hear what they're I mean, they're probably getting just like he said, kind of Kickstarter funding money now, but I'd love to know what they're thinking long term. Is it like you pay for a therapist as a user or the therapist pay to be part of the the team that users can choose from? Like how are they? Are they going to do ads or something else
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Yeah.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
to make money?
TJ_VANTOLL:
I imagine there's some sort of like, there's the matchmaking element, right? You have therapists that are looking for patients and patients that are looking for therapists. And probably if you just sit in the middle there and take a cut, seems
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Mm-hmm.
TJ_VANTOLL:
like a decent business opportunity as long as you can scale up.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Yeah, never
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Yeah.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
mind.
TJ_VANTOLL:
Hopefully, maybe we can chat for another minute or two and then hopefully he's able to find his way back. If not, we could just add on our picks
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Hahaha!
TJ_VANTOLL:
and like add on a segment that's just like, hey, he disconnected.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Right. Here's what we would do.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Yeah. Yeah.
TJ_VANTOLL:
Here's how
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Firebase
TJ_VANTOLL:
you can find
JACK_HERRINGTON:
is good
TJ_VANTOLL:
him
JACK_HERRINGTON:
stuff.
TJ_VANTOLL:
on social media.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
I was actually Yeah, the only thing I it's from a technical perspective, I didn't know if he could do real time connections with react native. I knew you could do them. I've done with them with react web with ionic,
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Mm-hmm.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
that sort of stuff. No problem. Because you have like, sockets.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Yeah.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
But I didn't know you could view these sockets off mobile. So I was kind of curious about that.
TJ_VANTOLL:
I don't know why they'd limit it. I don't know. That was
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Or just like...
TJ_VANTOLL:
to me, they're always their killer feature just because they nailed that really
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Hmm.
TJ_VANTOLL:
well even back in the day. So I'd
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Mm-hmm.
TJ_VANTOLL:
be shocked if it didn't work on mobile.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Yeah.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
I'm sure it does. I just wonder how it does it. Like, is it really just up pulling underneath the hood or what?
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Mm.
TJ_VANTOLL:
iOS and Android have similar APIs to WebSockets. I don't know the exact APIs, but I know you can do similar things where you just maintain a constant TCP connection to a server.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
That's probably exactly what they use for online mobile games too, right?
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Interesting.
TJ_VANTOLL:
Uh...
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Yeah.
TJ_VANTOLL:
All right.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Well, you want to do the awkward wrap up and we'll talk about picks.
TJ_VANTOLL:
I can do the awkward wrap up. I'm gonna get his Twitter profile up. I'll just get at least something to plug at the end here. Cause I think at this point, I don't know, his internet was struggling anyways. So I don't know if it was just a
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Yeah, I think I'm
TJ_VANTOLL:
catastrophic
JACK_HERRINGTON:
down down.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
just gave up.
TJ_VANTOLL:
failure or I'm not totally sure. Man, I'm falling apart now too.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Hahahaha
TJ_VANTOLL:
I didn't bring any water in here or anything.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
That's
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Oh no.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
okay, we're all alive.
TJ_VANTOLL:
and
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Well, apologies to whoever is editing this
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Yeah, exactly.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
episode.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Sorry.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Our guest, like you might have been able to hear it just from the audio recording, but he was having some internet issues and at about 25, 24 minutes in, he just completely dropped from the call. So we hope that he gets uploaded and we'll just try and wrap up the show from here. And I don't know, maybe have a second. second show with him to finish up or something.
TJ_VANTOLL:
Yeah, we'll reach
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Yeah.
TJ_VANTOLL:
out to Mikhail and see what they want to do. We'll see. I don't know, this might be salvageable. It might not be. Yeah, this, I don't know.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Thanks for watching!
TJ_VANTOLL:
I mean, we got like a solid 20 minute conversation in, so
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Yeah.
TJ_VANTOLL:
I don't know. Maybe it'll be good enough. All right, I'll, so if you are editing, we'll just consider this a cut to this point, so. So hey everybody, this is probably gonna be an awkward cut, but our guest randomly dropped. We're still not totally sure what happened, but we recorded a little bit more on our thoughts on Firebase as well. And we do wanna give you some links if you want to follow up with Rafael. So his Twitter profile should be in the show notes. If not, it's twitter.com slash the T-H-E-A-F-O-L-A-Y-A-N. So you can find him there. If you want to reach out to ask any more follow-ups on React Native or Firebase or what he's doing, because it does something. He has a pretty cool app and thing that he is working on. But we do want to wrap up with our picks before we let you go today, because I mean, we all know you're here for the picks anyways. So
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Ha ha ha ha.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Ha ha ha
TJ_VANTOLL:
oh,
JACK_HERRINGTON:
ha! Oh hey! Whoa, wait a second,
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
He
JACK_HERRINGTON:
he's
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
returns!
JACK_HERRINGTON:
back!
TJ_VANTOLL:
there's a plot
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Holy moly!
TJ_VANTOLL:
twist.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Whoa, okay!
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
I'm really sorry,
JACK_HERRINGTON:
And
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
my internet
JACK_HERRINGTON:
kinda
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
just
JACK_HERRINGTON:
maybe?
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
went...
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Are you on the phone now or something?
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
Yes, can you guys hear me?
TJ_VANTOLL:
Yes.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Yes, barely.
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
My internet just went up for some reason guys.
TJ_VANTOLL:
You're cool. I mean, it sounds like you're okay at the moment, I think. Are you still there?
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
Yes, yes I am.
TJ_VANTOLL:
Okay.
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
I'm just wondering if you can hear me in real time.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
There's a little
TJ_VANTOLL:
I think.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
bit of latency.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Yeah.
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
Let's see. I'm trying to get that sorted.
TJ_VANTOLL:
Let us know, I mean, we can account for the latency and we can also just try to record just a few more minutes just to wrap this up as well and account for the latency. So when you think you're good, let us know and we can do that.
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
All right, all right. I think we can make do with this.
TJ_VANTOLL:
Okay. So let's see. We were talking about React Native, Firebase. We were talking about
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
scaling.
TJ_VANTOLL:
scaling. So I can toss it back over to you. So Rafael, we lost you there for a second, but you were talking about scaling and we were talking about concurrent connections. And you were getting ready to tell us some other things that were some struggles or some challenges as you were scaling up. So maybe you a continue our kickoff there with some of the other challenges with scaling you've ran into.
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
Yeah, yes. So fortunately, I would say Firebase helps or handles scaling really well. But on the end of the developer, there's, I think, a bit of optimization that we especially had to do to make sure that we weren't overusing resources. Although Firebase, you know... allowed us to operate on a pay-as-you-use basis. So we're only paying for number one number of concrete connections that we had. We were paying for in terms of data downloaded, especially from the database, we were paying for that. But we had to make sure that we get our parts to reduce expenses, even as much as Firebase was really generous. So for example, the... the Firebase free plan allows up to 200 concurrent connections. You also have about 10 gigabytes of data per month that you can easily transfer between end users. And we were using up the data connection limits pretty quickly. So we had to, I mean, do a lot of things. We had to make sure that we were catching data as was coming from the database so that we didn't overuse so many resources. But yes, other than that, I would say Firebase and I was understanding really, really well.
TJ_VANTOLL:
I'm curious, have you done, like have you mathed out the like future growth patterns? Cause I always struggle with any of these sort of cloud services. Like, do you have an idea of what your costs will be like when you hit 10,000 users, 100,000 users? Have you planned out like how much you think that's gonna cost and how you're gonna handle that? Or what's your thoughts around all of that?
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
Yes, so with regards to cost, that's something that I haven't really thought of much, actually, but I know that so far, we've only had to worry about, not even concurrent connections now, we've only about had to worry about data transfer between Firebase and our users. And we've again been able to shrink that, that it's almost free right now. But when we get to maybe 10,000 users, which I think we should get to by the end of next quarter, I believe that our expenses should not maybe go past 10, $20 a month.
TJ_VANTOLL:
Did you say 10 or $20 a month or were there some zeros there?
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
$10, $20 a month. Right now it's like virtually zero. It's like virtually zero. We almost spent our first dollar on Firebase last month, but we had to do our part to make sure that we were minimizing data sends and data download. Yeah, but yeah.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Wow, that actually sounds very reasonable.
TJ_VANTOLL:
Yeah, that's not bad at all. I'm gonna move our users over to Firebase.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Ha ha ha ha ha!
TJ_VANTOLL:
Um, Rafael, are there any other challenges that like, especially we have a lot of just straight web developers that haven't toyed with the native app at all? Are there any challenges you've hit on mobile that you want to let people know? We have any of our listeners that are curious about building a, an iOS or Android app, like what are some things you hit that have been rough edges or really kept you up at night?
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Yeah, the transition from react, straight react to react native.
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
Yes, I would say the X4 team is really doing so much in that context. It's really, really easy to port from React onto React Native. And with the latest versions of React Native now, it's even easier for native developers to build for the web as well. As React Native, especially using X4, The new Expo router by the Expo team is really something that I've enjoyed using over the past few weeks. I mean, it's feeling better, but it's, I mean, it is like so easy. With Expo, you do not even need to do all of the, the tedious Expo setup and everything. You only need to set up a React-Media project using Expo, of course. and everything is unlooted for you by the exporting.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
So you would recommend that to anybody who's looking to get started with React Native is to use the expo. Is it a framework, I guess, or a library?
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
I would say it's a framework. I mean, there's this big debate of what a framework is and what a library is, but X-wayTof is a set of tools that, I mean, they've made it so easy compared to how it was last year and a few years ago to build a mobile app compared to doing it from react-muted from scratch.
TJ_VANTOLL:
Are there any other things we've missed related to to Firebase or react native or anything else you think our Our listeners should be aware of you'd want to any advice you'd want to pass along
RAPHAEL_AFOLAYAN:
Uh, yes, my, I mean, I, I tell this to every React Native developer that, um, that asks me for advice in, in starting out. And I always tell them to not do React Native from scratch because the, the amount of time that you spend getting set up, number one is so expensive. And there are like so many issues that you run into in terms of package, in terms of updates and all of that. So, I mean, I tell everybody to always make sure that they use Expo first of all. If you want to go fast, if you want to go fast and you want to avoid as many features as you can, you should just start with Expo. Because in terms of providing in-app updates, there's like so much that Expo offers to React-in-Teknol developers now that... It's only going to be somebody who wants to touch on themselves that will go on to do react native from scratch.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Great advice.
TJ_VANTOLL:
Cool, this has been a lot of fun to chat about. Why don't we move into our picks? So it's a segment where we just pick something fun from tech or from our lives in general. And Paige, do you wanna kick us off with picks today?
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Sure, I'm going to pick something that we may have picked in a previous season, but the final season, well, I think it's the final season of the Star Trek Picard just wrapped
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Oh, yeah.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
up pretty recently. Yeah,
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Yeah.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
I saw you tweeting about that on Twitter, Jack. But if you're, even if you're not really into the sci-fi Star Trek universe. They just wrapped up their third season of it. Jean-Luc Picard, who's played by Sir Patrick Stewart, who is just a fantastic actor, does a great job. And if you are into the Star Trek universe, you're gonna see all these characters from Next Generation and Enterprise. And I don't think Deep Space Nine comes in there, but there's a whole slew of cameos by people
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Yeah.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
from previous shows, and it's great. I really... thoroughly enjoyed it. Great last season, brought tears to my eyes. So if you're looking for something that's really going to, you know, grip you and warm your heart and give you a massive blast of nostalgia, if you've watched previous
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Hahaha
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Star Trek's, then I would definitely say check it out. Picard, really, really good.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
It was definitely in the solid
TJ_VANTOLL:
Excellent.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
of fast.
TJ_VANTOLL:
Check what pics do you have.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Sure. I just went down to California and go see my kid and I took along an insta 360 x three cameras, but the size of I don't know, like half a pack of playing cards or something. It's a cute little camera. It takes 360 photo or video so you can basically just throw it anywhere, put it on a selfie stick and get all these crazy angles. And we went to the Santa Cruz beach boardwalk. and just did the rides and stuff. And I had this this thing and it was great. And we had these awesome videos of going down like the the flume and being on
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
So
JACK_HERRINGTON:
a roller
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
fun.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
coaster and stuff. And my wife's like, great, I'll never have to ride one of these things ever again. Now you can just, you know, like, show me the video. It's just really fun. So if you if you want to do some sort of like travel vlogging or just have a lot of fun, like with a camera, I think it's just a really great little gadget. And I don't think it's that expensive. So, yeah, that's.
TJ_VANTOLL:
Which
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Thanks.
TJ_VANTOLL:
one, I've seen these things before. I'm on their website. You said, was it the X3
JACK_HERRINGTON:
It's
TJ_VANTOLL:
you
JACK_HERRINGTON:
the
TJ_VANTOLL:
said?
JACK_HERRINGTON:
x3
TJ_VANTOLL:
Okay.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
is the most recent one. Yeah.
TJ_VANTOLL:
Yeah, I've seen people, they're shockingly tiny
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Thanks for
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Yeah,
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
watching!
TJ_VANTOLL:
for.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
right. They're little action cameras, and they're fully waterproof and stuff. So you can like, dip them in the water and then yank them back out again and get a kind of cool like the effect like that. And you can see all these like there's awesome things on YouTube of folks doing just crazy, crazy stuff with it. So if you like if you if you have some sort of action thing in your life, like you do skateboarding, or whatever,
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Mm-hmm.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
you know, it's great for that kind of thing. Or
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
So
JACK_HERRINGTON:
if you
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
it's
JACK_HERRINGTON:
go
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
the new
JACK_HERRINGTON:
visit
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
GoPro.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
a place with Yeah, yeah, a GoPro but like full 360 and
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Cool.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
crazy
TJ_VANTOLL:
Yeah.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
effects and stuff. Yeah.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
nice.
TJ_VANTOLL:
My pick for this week is going to be a camping chair, actually. It's springtime here, so I've been at a lot of soccer games.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Oh yeah.
TJ_VANTOLL:
It's one of those things where one parent bought one of these camping chairs and everybody else saw it, and then eventually it spread to the whole team because everybody loved it. But it is a GCI camping chair that is, I think, a Dick's exclusive brand. And it's a rocker. So it's like just your standard
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Oh no way!
TJ_VANTOLL:
standard
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Wow.
TJ_VANTOLL:
sort of chair, but
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Stop
TJ_VANTOLL:
it has like a
JACK_HERRINGTON:
it!
TJ_VANTOLL:
piston built into the back where you can rock on this thing and it's a little more pricey. Right. It's like a 70, $80 chair. Right. But if you do any serious amount of sitting around, whether it's camping or at sporting events
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Oh
TJ_VANTOLL:
or
JACK_HERRINGTON:
yeah, if you were there with the
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
That's
JACK_HERRINGTON:
kids,
TJ_VANTOLL:
whatever,
JACK_HERRINGTON:
man.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
cool.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Oh yeah.
TJ_VANTOLL:
it's, it's worth the money. They're incredibly good. So if you have a Dick's near you. try them out in the store. Cause there's a couple of different models too, depending on how high you want them. The technology here, they have like, the one we have has a thing built in for a cell phone, like a slot so you can slot a cell phone into it. It's just so silly and stupid, but it's,
JACK_HERRINGTON:
This is
TJ_VANTOLL:
but
JACK_HERRINGTON:
when
TJ_VANTOLL:
it's
JACK_HERRINGTON:
you get
TJ_VANTOLL:
also
JACK_HERRINGTON:
like
TJ_VANTOLL:
really
JACK_HERRINGTON:
the
TJ_VANTOLL:
fun, right?
JACK_HERRINGTON:
360 on like one of these massive, like eight foot boom poles. And you just like keep it over the kids and I can get like
TJ_VANTOLL:
Yeah,
JACK_HERRINGTON:
the full
TJ_VANTOLL:
you're
JACK_HERRINGTON:
on
TJ_VANTOLL:
rocking,
JACK_HERRINGTON:
selfie
TJ_VANTOLL:
sitting back and
JACK_HERRINGTON:
drones.
TJ_VANTOLL:
rocking.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Yeah, exactly. Right. There you
TJ_VANTOLL:
Yeah,
JACK_HERRINGTON:
go.
TJ_VANTOLL:
you
JACK_HERRINGTON:
I
TJ_VANTOLL:
record
JACK_HERRINGTON:
got the footage.
TJ_VANTOLL:
the kids,
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Don't worry.
TJ_VANTOLL:
you're watching
JACK_HERRINGTON:
I got this.
TJ_VANTOLL:
Star Trek Fakard on your phone.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Yeah,
TJ_VANTOLL:
Like you're,
JACK_HERRINGTON:
exactly.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Yes.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Getting all
TJ_VANTOLL:
you've
JACK_HERRINGTON:
the member berries.
TJ_VANTOLL:
got the life.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Yeah. But in order to put the thing down, you got to do that Jason Momoa trick of like kind of And you ever seen that that gif
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Oh yeah,
JACK_HERRINGTON:
of him?
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
the
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Yeah.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
one-handed, just
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Right. The one handed
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
open
JACK_HERRINGTON:
thing
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
it up.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
like it just like looks so
TJ_VANTOLL:
Oh,
JACK_HERRINGTON:
amazing,
TJ_VANTOLL:
yeah.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
you know, as he
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Yeah.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
does, like going to the soccer game.
TJ_VANTOLL:
Well, cool. Yeah, you can be the fanciest soccer parent. All right. Well, we have lost our guest. Rafael
JACK_HERRINGTON:
That's what...
TJ_VANTOLL:
has left. I also have no idea how he... He's left a couple times during this recording, so I'm not sure how this turned out. But Rafael is on Twitter. He is the T-H-E-A-F-O-L-A-Y-A-N on Twitter. If you want to reach out to him, it was a pretty fun chat.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Yeah.
TJ_VANTOLL:
I had fun, so it'd be interesting to see. I wish him the best with his app, because I think it's a really cool idea.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Yeah, sounds like a really, a really useful one too, because I
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Yeah,
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
know a lot
JACK_HERRINGTON:
and...
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
of people struggled during the pandemic and even afterwards. So the more we can help people with mental health, the better.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Big time.
TJ_VANTOLL:
Good stuff. Well, thanks everybody for joining and see you all next week.
PAIGE_NIEDRINGHAUS:
Yeah, see you then.
JACK_HERRINGTON:
Okay, see you guys.