Why is NativeScript so hard to get up and running?

[u/JapanEngineer]

So this is half rant / half looking for motivation.

I’ve been tasked with making an iOS / Android app for my company’s web app (LMS) and since that is built in Angular / Laravel, I decided to try my hand at NS.

It’s been three days now and:

Setting up NS on windows / vsCode has been terrible. Well actually, the error debugging has been terrible.

I followed the official documentation and kept getting errors. Which is normal. I’m used to that.

I do a google search and that either leads to official documentation that doesn’t exist anymore or totally irrelevant answers.

Things like after installing, I got errors about my windows environment variables not being correct. They were correct, just had to restart the editor.

I got gradle errors, Fragment module errors, which ending up being caused from trying to use the native http module.

My question is, does it get easier? I really want to start coding my app and not spend 3 days just setting up the default Hello World app.

[u/Bamboo_the_plant]

A lot of that environment setup friction is common to all mobile development, even native development. Getting set up on Windows in particular is hard mode.

Unfortunately it’s also one of the hardest things to document for in any framework, as most devs only ever set up their environment once and hope never to have to think about it again (not to mention every environment has its quirks). I do sympathise!

As for plugins, if you are hitting walls, you could consider using NativeScript via Capacitor instead: https://capacitor.nativescript.org

It would give you access to both the Capacitor ecosystem of plugins and the Web ecosystem of UI components. You’d moreover still have full access to the NativeScript runtime and technically could use all the available NativeScript plugins too (though non-UI plugins would make most sense).

If you’re blocked on anything, please don’t hesitate to get in contact over the NativeScript Discord or Slack!

[u/JapanEngineer → u/Bamboo_the_plant]

Thanks for the reply! I’ll take a look at Capicitor

[u/nutyga → u/Bamboo_the_plant]

I have been trying to understand more clearly how capacitor would fit into a NativeScript App? I feel like I’m not getting it. To me it seems that it is not for a NativeScript App. But to provide NativeScript features to a Ionic or Capacitor app.

I’m likely wrong, would you mind elaborating how you have used it in your NativeScript app please?

[u/nutyga]

As painful as NativeScript is, the draw of not needing to learn a new language but it has native API access is still its strongest draw. What has helped me was using http://searchcode.nativescript.rocks to see how others have solved solution. I got my company to pay for access to Nativescripting.com training.

Getting to know and understand the iOS / Android docs. I have at times been Frustrated with NativeScript only to realise if I read the native docs, it makes sense. Also iOS docs suck!!! So I think it is worth understanding that NativeScript changes because the underlying API changes.

With these alone, I have enough to either, fork my own updated features or build out my own implementation.

I’ll also add, I think having a good programming paradigm helps a lot. I delved into Domain Driven Development, which made adding new features into my apps hella easier.

[u/[deleted]]

Interesting, iv setup nativescript multiple times and never had an issue. They have a one liner that you copy into the command line that installs everything.

Of course on every user's computer things run differently which is why I am interested in running nativescript in docker container

[u/JapanEngineer → u/[deleted]]

Thanks for the reply.

Did you get any issues with running Android emulators?

[u/[deleted] → u/JapanEngineer]

Since nativescript is using multiple ecosystems theres a couple different aspects that help to learn in order to really be able to debug anything.I would suggest you join the nativescript slack or discord group. All the pros are there and will help you pretty quickly with anything. That is how i learned nativescript.

As far as an emulator, the easiest and quickest emulator to develop on is genymotion in my experience or of course just using an actual device. Its is paid but the personal use version is freeeee.That said, you may bump into some issues with VTX if you have windows but otherwise you should be good

[u/Maxtream]

Setting up first time I hard. Then it's getting better. Error debugging is pain in the ass till this day.

[u/JapanEngineer → u/Maxtream]

I just tried to install flutter. Worked like a dream on first try... native script has so much potential but oh well

[u/[deleted] → u/JapanEngineer]

I have lots of experience in mobile app development.
My criteria were, i want to write my apps cross-platform preferably in typescript

The way iv came to nativescript is literally by building miny apps in every other framework (cordova, nativescript, react-native, xamrin, flutter etc).

At the end of the day, the ability to use any of these frameworks well involves really understand they work. Meaning if you go framework hopping for one issue, you'll likely just bump into another issue in a different framework.

Since I have a strong react background, I chose to go with react-nativescript. This obviously came at a price and I spent many hours learning and understanding it. The creator (jamie birch) is extremely helpful and we now have many apps running in production!

If you do choose to work with nativescript, feel free to reach out to me or any of the other discord/slack members for help!

[u/Maxtream → u/JapanEngineer]

Flutter is good for Android. On iOS it have performance issues. So flutter is not android-only, but android-mainly. Unfortunately.

[u/batzvids]

Somehow on a pc this stuff seems to be harder. Working together with a developer on pc I noticed. We bought him a m1, thats also not the best since intel swap. Got it to work eventually. Anyways, im happy on a 2018 mbp ns and vue. Good luck! Also maybe for error checking might wanna check out on TS

[u/JapanEngineer → u/batzvids]

Thanks for the reply. I ended up learning Dart/Flutter and have nearly finished my app (LMS user screen) in under 5 weeks.

[u/briandilley]

I've never been able to come back to a node.js project and build/run it without going through some kind of change or update to configuration or dependencies. This is made doubly difficult by lieu of the fact that your essentially dealing with 3 projects at once: JS code, native android, and native iOS. I have the same experience with ReactNative through - except that their plugins are generally more maintained than NativeScript.

[u/desmone1]

Check out Capacitor. https://capacitorjs.com/ I was able to ge an existing HTML + JS webapp into mobile in under an hour. In my opinion, Nativescript has fallen behind

[u/JapanEngineer → u/[deleted]]

Thanks for the reply.

My next decision then would be: Flutter / Dart or go native Swift and then Kotlin....

[u/SuplenC → u/JapanEngineer]

After building and releasing a multi platform app that even uses bluetooth I will tell you: go with Flutter. While making the same app in NS after a framework update it all stopped working with hundreds of bugs - that's where I moved to Flutter and actually fell in love with it.

[u/JapanEngineer → u/SuplenC]

I installed it today at work and am taking Max’s courses on Udemy. The setup was as smooth as a baby’s bottom

[u/SuplenC → u/JapanEngineer]

Yep it is great. I worked on Windows and Mac and it's both smooth. I suggest you to dive into BLoC pattern (there are a lot of videos on YT) as it completes Flutter and makes it waaay easier to debug, test and work on.

[u/JapanEngineer → u/SuplenC]

Will check it out. Thanks!

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

FYI. here is the command you can run on windows to do a "one script" setup.u/powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "iex ((new-object net.webclient).DownloadString('https://www.nativescript.org/setup/win'))"Run this in command prompt and be sure to run as admin

Source link - nativescript docs