Adventures in code

I can probably spend ages thinking of the ideas and structure to use, but the goal is to have a functional app/website thingy. For that to happen I need to think about two things :

• code
• tools

Initial plan was to do everything in the language I’m most familliar with (C#.Net) using the latest and greatest version of that platform/toolset to build what I need.

• Blazor
• Universal Windows Platform
• Xamarin

Easy right ?
*eh* nope. I discovered that the example code for reading NFC tags required my Android phone to have the latest and greatest version of that OS. Mine is still stuck at version 9 with no updates announced/planned.

So … my search continued and I discovered React Native and Expo.
Technically you don’t “need” the Expo toolset.
The video below does assume quite a bit of knowledge and it’s pretty high speed (casually mentioning stuff without telling you ‘why’), but it was enough for me to get the essence of the platform and its potential.

I did run into minor issues when installing, but those seemed to fix themselves when I tried again.

Best of all ?
Open the Expo app, scan the QR code that is displayed after the code has compiled and it’s “Hello World!” time in seconds.

While the goal is to create a proper stand-alone app this will make it possible to distribute work-in-progress without waiting for Google/Apple to approve my app or making non-geeks jump through the hoops needed to install apps that aren’t in the app-store.

Expo in the Google app-store

Note : there is a version in the app-store for Apple too. However as I don’t own an iPhone/iPad I’m ignoring that at this time in my coding.