whostolemyhat

You can't conceive of any possible scenario where it might be useful to get a notification? Not even for Gmail, Slack, a timer etc?

It's a shake-down of companies which have tried to avoid paying taxes.

Which wheels are being re-invented on the web?

Mapumental[1] does something like this - it shows how far you can get with public transport from a postcode in a certain amount of time.

[1] https://mapumental.com/)

Cool I'll just roll my own Facebook and Stripe integrations then

Yep, that's our long-term plan, but saying we want to get rid of our working app and re-write it as two new apps from scratch doesn't go down particularly well with the business.

The main problem we're having is that newer versions of RN use React 16. React 16 has breaking changes, particularly the changes to PropTypes and createClass, which some of our dependencies have already fixed but others haven't. This means to upgrade RN, we need to either submit fixes for all these libs or use a version of RN which still uses React 15, both of which have their own problems, especially since React 16 is still a release candidate and not a full release.

We're not creating our own libraries for a couple of reasons: firstly, this was supposed to be a quick project to see if an app is viable (but has now lasted long enough that we've run into this issue), and secondly we've already got forks of key libraries, which is taking more time away from implementing actual features since we now need to maintain them and pull in updates from the original repos.

Yes we should have kept dependencies up-to-date, but constant breaking changes are just taking too much time away from development time, so it's not a good fit for our project as it stands.

In-app payments and integration with Facebook login, Stripe, Apple subscriptions etc. It was in the first sentence ;)

I had similar issues taking over a project using an older version of React Native. Upgrading is incredibly painful since there's no stable version and libraries don't always update to match. The current release of React Native uses a release candidate version of React, which many of our dependencies haven't yet updated to match, so we're either stuck with an old version with poor compatibility or have to fix dozens of third-party libraries to try to catch up - both are not ideal, and both are caused by constant breaking change releases.

Yes, we regret it. Our app is just a wrapper around a webview, and handles things like in-app payments and SDK integrations like Facebook login, in a team of ~10.

Our version of React Native is quite far behind which makes using libraries not already in the project difficult: you have to track back through versions to find a compatible version, which then may not be doing what you want since it's an older version.

We're also having trouble upgrading the version of React Native due to versions having breaking changes. I know it's technically still not v1.0, but in reality a lot of companies are using it so having a stable version would be nice. Since it's unstable, many libraries haven't updated to compensate so you run into the same problem as above, tracking down precise versions of dependencies which also still do what you want.

The build process feels pretty rickety and seems to rely on a lot of global state - I spent a while checking how we could update dependencies, but when I rolled back to a stable version I was unable to build even after re-installing node modules etc. I was only able to fix it after opening Xcode, removing all pod libraries and re-adding them; I have no idea why that worked, and there are very few clues on Github or Stack Overflow as to what specific errors mean. Fixing my build step took the best part of a day.

Overall, for a small app like ours, we're just spending far too long on non-development overhead, like fixing build systems or checking dependency versions, and will probably move to native versions at some point in the future. It may be a pain maintaining two separate versions, but we'll have solid integrations with payment gateways and lots of documentation and info on Github/SO for problems.

I like React and the idea of React Native, but at the moment it just feels far too unstable and unpolished to use. I'd like to use it in the future, but probably not until it's had a major version release.

The voting and hide/comment age buttons are terrible on mobile - they're far too small and close together so it's easy to accidentally press the wrong button. Nested comments are bad on mobile too, since they end up being in a column two words wide.

Yes. It's annoying having workarounds for basic site functionality.

This is such a strange view - you don't care about Pao's side of the story because she's not a complete paragon of virtue? You also seem to be basing that on her time at Reddit, during which, as the article mentions, she was being smeared by Kleiner?

Those banner images are also way too big - they're 4800px x 3200px and 1.2mb, and take ages to load even on wired connections.

Well, if you don't like learning then you can still use DHTML like it's 2003

Couple of mentions of watching films on his phone...

Yes, we probably should ensure people don't starve to death in a modern society. What's wrong with you?

Well, if you go to another country and you don't know the laws, you will still get arrested if you break the law.

You'd rather change editor twice than pay for one?

I write down things I've had to look up or research while working, or little snippets which might come in handy in the future.

I also find that writing a tutorial-style post helps me understand new frameworks or concepts better, since I have to make sure I know enough about the subject to be able to explain it.

It's also nice that people read it and recognise you - I've worked at a couple of places now where people have mentioned one of my posts has been helpful.

Have you heard of keto or Atkins diets? High protein intake isn't really a problem.

It's an additional hurdle - spammers would need to invest at least $400 up-front, which would put off a good many of them.

But why does that matter? Does your Angular 1 application work? Does Angular 2 existing prevent it from working?

Would you rather have less documentation and fewer tutorials? I wouldn't call four links about a new library excessive.

Type 2 diabetes may be, but I don't think my wallet caused my pancreas to pack in

I've been working as a contractor for the last few years, so have experience of several companies. All have them have employed people over 40 and 50, some also over-60s, in all kinds of roles including writing code and management. Generally, their experience in delivering software is invaluable, regardless of technologies used.

People online tend to under-estimate how many people over 30 are involved in tech, for the simple reason that they tend not to use social media as much.

If you're talking specifically about your current job, then maybe they expect career progression to mean moving to management. Talk to your line manager to see what the coding career path is - if there isn't one then maybe you might have to consider finding another job at a place which does have coding career paths.

I live in Bristol, and graffiti is definitely not dying out here.

[1] http://www.upfest.co.uk/

[2] https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=bristol+graffiti&tbm=isch

That'd be really interesting, splitting social media control out of the existing silos. The problem with that seems to be that when you try to read someone's profile and they're not online, it wouldn't work - what would happen in that case?

Yep, it definitely felt like a couple of sentences of plot followed by a page of 80s trivia copied from Wikipedia.

"The customer is always right" is an aphorism which applies to market forces, not individual customers. People keep misusing this phrase to mean that you should never disagree with a customer, but that's not the meaning of it at all.