Fair enough on the iOS mention. The tech stack (React Native, Expo, TypeScript, SQLite) is detailed in the blog post, I wasn't trying to hide it.
As others pointed out in the thread, RN renders actual native views, not a webview. For this use case: browsing a local SQLite database offline, it works really well.
Funny enough this was my first mobile app ever, I figured it out doing it. Expo helped a lot. The Apple review process on the other hand… that was a whole learning experience on its own.
RN does use a lot of native code. It’s not based on a webview like Electron is. Most of the builtin components are native views and there’s no CSS. The JS engine is also simpler. It’s more akin to the lua runtime in Neovim.
It’s a fair assumption. The React part is more about copying JSX and other React concepts (declarative UI etc) but it all boils down to native binaries. The toolchain is also pretty nice. It does hot reloading so you don’t have to recompile the app while building locally. The downside is you get less for free compared to SwiftUI. But SwiftUI also has many footguns and bugs. No free lunch!
Instead, and I’m not against AI, AI slop that isn’t native, has awful design and awful font decisions.
Someone should take the idea but implement it properly.
And a Cover Flow view is a must.
And it's a RN app:
> It’s a React Native app built with Expo and TypeScript. Data lives in SQLite.
As others pointed out in the thread, RN renders actual native views, not a webview. For this use case: browsing a local SQLite database offline, it works really well.
Just speculating, I've not done mobile development since before RN was even a thing.