The move to react native

The ENTIRE reason I initially pursued programming later in my career as a product manager was because I was frustrated with the time it took to get from the abstract concepts written in my verbose requirements documents to actual code that was living and breathing. I initially learned Rails because of the approachability of Ruby and the community and also because of some of the tooling that got messy stuff out of my way so I could get the basics done more rapidly. Progress a few years and I’ve launched an iOS app using Swift…then had hired a contract dev to build the android app. This was my first venture as developer or product into the mobile app world and it was enormously frustrating to have feature disparity between platforms. Inevitably, iOS would have the features before Android because I was at the helm and the Android users didn’t appreciate that. So I started looking for options and I had seen a few things about React Native. I immediately started absorbing as much as I could by reading everything, took a Udemy class, and then embarked on rebuilding my Swift/Java app in React Native. I have a week or two of coding left and it will be in both app stores. Efficient, effective, easy to use, intelligent…it’s fair to say I love React Native and would really welcome coding in it full time. I am using Facebook (login and sharing), Parse Server, (entire data system) Redux, OneSignal for notifications, Ad Mob, Google Analytics, and React Native Router Flux.

I pursued programming later in my career as a product manager was because I was frustrated with the time it took to get from the abstract concepts in my requirements to actual living code. I learned Rails because of the approachability of Ruby and the community. I’ve since launched an iOS (Swift) app…then had hired a contract dev to build the android app. This was my first venture as developer or product into the mobile app world and it was enormously frustrating to have feature disparity between platforms. Inevitably, iOS would have the features before Android. I started absorbing as much as I could about React Native by reading everything, took a Udemy class, and then embarked on rebuilding my Swift/Java app in React Native. I have a week or two of coding left and it will be in both app stores. Efficient, effective, easy to use, intelligent…it’s fair to say I love React Native. I am using Facebook, Parse Server, Redux, OneSignal for notifications, Ad Mob, and Google Analytics.

I’m currently senior engineer (contract) for both Vote.org and projectgreenlight.com (both Ruby on Rails web apps).

It really depends on how much I will be just coding, versus managing any team members, or even bringing my product management background to bear. I honestly love coding day and night, so I’m fine with that, but I’m pretty flexible too…it all depends on the specific opportunity.

I want to spend more time in React/React Native ecosystem as well as spend more time building mobile apps.

I have about 1.5 yrs of mobile app dev experience, starting with Swift as mentioned above. I’ve done a little bit of Objective-C and Java in just supporting the existing apps. I have one app in the Apple app store: Concon: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/concon-app/id1073484948?mt=8 (this is the app that is about 90% rebuilt in React Native now and it should be replaced in the app store in a week or two at most).