Into React Native
After a nice weekend, it's back to the grind. This was my first weekend after returning to the office. If you hadn't read the earlier posts, I had the opportunity to work from home for about a month. Not everyone likes working from home, I loved it. I didn't have to get dressed up and I could see my little girl anytime I wanted. I was able to get coffee or food whenever I wanted to. I also found that I was just as productive, if not more so. It was nice to not have the distractions of the office; I could just turn on a podcast or some music and get into the zone. It really made me realize how much I appreciated the luxury of working from home, and I know now this will be a premium for me in my next search for a job. For now, I'm back at the office with the rest of our team. It hasn't been all that bad, but it doesn't seem like other people are taking the virus as seriously as I am. In fact, only myself and 2 other people I've seen at work are actually wearing masks. For the most part, I stick to myself in my cubicle and have limited contact with other people in the office, but I know it's still a lot more possible to contract the virus than it would be if I were home.
Since I got back, my cohort and I have started work on a massive React Native project. He's been working on this project for quite a while, but basically started back from scratch a couple weeks ago, completely reworking the architecture of the application. He ended up creating a system that will allow us to develop for mobile, tablet, and the web, all at one time. There are a few extra steps we have to go through, but it's a lot better than having to write the same application twice for mobile and for web. When we write any kind of styling, we have to add properties to the styling objects that will coincide with either phone, small tablet, large tablet, or desktop. It takes quite a bit longer to create the application for each responsive screen, but we only have to do it once. The way he has it set up is really streamlining our work. Once I got the hang of the system, I've really gotten into a groove of writing the code. I haven't even started on the functionality for my screens yet, which is going to be a massive undertaking, but I'm getting close to having all the styling and infrastructure done for the 2 screens I'm responsible for.
When I took my first React Native course, I wasn't really a fan because of the workflow. When you are running a simulator on your machine, it really slows everything down. In fact, it actually got to the point where it was overheating my Mac. Now, I write code on my Mac, view the desktop version on one of my monitors on my Windows work machine, have Framer up on the other monitor to compare the styling, and I have an iPad set up to view it on that screen. This is an application for our sales representatives, kind of like a dashboard for their daily work. We have a whole slew of iPads that we sell to our representatives if they want them, so this is going to be the main platform they use for this application. Right now, there is an application that does all the functionality we are building, but they can only view it on a computer. Also, this application was written with ASP.net by a backend developer, and it looks exactly like what a backend developer would create. They aren't known for their design prowess. This is going to be a huge improvement for our representatives, and once they get over the big change, they're going to love it. We just need to make sure it's awesome when we roll it out. We're getting a lot of pressure to get the first version completed by the beginning of June, which is a big ask, but we'll try our best.
Until tomorrow!
