My original goal was not learning React Native. I was just hoping to get better at JavaScript, and React seemed like a good way to do it. Then our mobile team was shorthanded, and when I looked at one of their React Native Github repos, it looked familiar enough to jump in and try to help out.
One year later, and I would say 60 percent of my time is spent building React Native apps.
We developed our React Native stack because we’re constantly trying to find tools that will make our products better. Any time we hear about a new tool or technique, our mobile team has a process for testing them out. If it proves out – delivering value to our clients — we’re quick to work it into our stack.
Cross-platform apps promise to deliver both Android and iOS native apps from one codebase, a two-for-one deal. If that sounds too good to be true, it’s because usually it is.
We’re experts at mobile development technologies, but the definition of “mobile” changes constantly. Because mobile usage is growing so fast and there are new tools and frameworks for building mobile apps every week, we have to be constantly finding, testing and adopting new skills and tools just to keep up.
That’s why we’ve made learning and teaching an important part of how we operate as a team.
I’ve written before about how much the tools and processes for our mobile team changed in the four years we’ve been around, but the truth is that they’re still changing. There are new tools and design patterns for structuring apps coming out all the time, a lot of which we want to try out. In the past year, we took React Native (a new cross-platform framework by Facebook) for a spin and really liked where it was going. Keeping up with what’s out there lets us give our partners the latest and greatest, and to do that efficiently we need everyone on our team to be looking out for cool things they want to bring to the group for testing.
The Client
Natural and organic children’s boutique Sprout San Francisco, with five locations in California, Illinois and New York and an online store carrying non-toxic and eco-friendly baby gear from rattles to cribs.
The Project
In 2012, Sprout became the first client for Table XI’s mobile practice when founder and CEO Suzanne Price reached out to see what kind of app might benefit her business. Since a full 25 percent of Sprout’s sales come from its registry business, we worked together to design a registry app that would help new parents pick out all the kit that comes along with having a kid. After four years and a backend change to the webstore, the app was ready for a total overhaul.
We’ve been training our future competitors.
Code Platoon is a non-profit that teaches development skills to veterans, to help them transition back into civilian life and get quality jobs. A coding bootcamp for folks who have been to real-life bootcamp. The 16-week courses cover the full Ruby on Rails stack — the same technology Table XI uses — and equips veterans for paid coding internships, and hopefully from there a career. With the help of scholarships, Code Platoon offers all this for only $1,500, a fraction of what other coding schools charge students.
For non-developers, it may seem like a new computer language is created every day, each with an uninformative name. Even developers sometimes feel that way. At Table XI, we’re always assessing ways to solve our clients’ problems, whether that’s a new schema for critiquing design or a new language well-suited to a necessary function. Still, the pace of new languages can make it difficult for our developers to try them out — and their new ways of solving problems
To broaden our thinking, this week several members of the Table XI team participated in a challenge: to take the coding exercise we ask our interview candidates to complete, and to build it in a language that’s unfamiliar. Each developer then presented the results to the group, so the whole team could each get an understanding of the new languages available, and an understanding of how our teammates approach a new language.
If you are the type of programmer who writes perfect, error-free code in every commit without fail, this tip is not for you. If you're like me, small mistakes sometimes occur – a debugger breakpoint left buried in an obscure area of the app, or maybe I missed resolving a conflict during a hairy merge. With discipline these things shouldn't happen frequently, but when there's an inevitable lapse it's nice to know that git's got your back.
Every year, wherever you are on December 13th, there's probably a code retreat happening someplace near you. That's because it's the Global Day of Code Retreat, and this past December, I traveled to San José, Costa Rica, for it. Part of the reason I trekked so far to participate was because Costa Rican software shop Pernix Solutions invited me to be a guest facilitator. On top of that, Table XI and Pernix wanted to try out a Developer Exchange, so this was an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.
Want to learn some code basics? It’s as easy as opening your web browser.
Confession: I am not a developer. Over time I’ve learned some cursory HTML, but the rest of the coding languages are Greek to me. As a writer among the programmers here at Table XI, I’ve felt a bit guilty about that. I’ve always wanted to get more familiar with code, partly to be able to understand developers better, and partly because it’s time to join the 21st century.
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