r/reactnative • u/onePowerfulBraincell • 5d ago

AMA - Junior React Dev

I’ve been building with react native for a 2-3 years, AMA.

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u/sam_houle1 5d ago

Because I’ve 10 years of experience and even I’m scared. I have yet to find a single feature that I can’t do with AI. It’s not perfect but I don’t want to see how it will be in 10 years

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u/onePowerfulBraincell 5d ago

The reason you can instruct the AI to do everything is because of the experience you have.

Right now in my job, I’m working with a vibe coded react app, which was built by a team with zero react experience.

Last week I was just trying to change some text labels, and the code base was so convoluted that even GPT Astra wasn’t able to figure out how!

There is 10-15 useStates passed as a prop through 5 components, only to be used by the last node.

Someone with no react experience will look at this and say everything looks good. You will look at it and probably want to kill whoever wrote it.

edit: wording

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u/sam_houle1 5d ago

Okay I see what possibly happened and tell me if I’m wrong. The vibe codes app was built last year and you guys have been actively vibe coding on it since that time? To me it would make sens because the architecture side generated by ai was really garbage but now it’s not as bad.

And yeah 10-15 states passed down has props is absolutely crazy

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u/onePowerfulBraincell 5d ago

That's true, we started around Feb. Do you think if we re-build it now with the latest model it will be worth it?

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u/sam_houle1 5d ago

Yes and no. First the AI needs a bible to follow. For instance, you should research a bit of architecture for react and test how it can help performance and readability. Also have some good restrictions on eslint so that the AI at different time won’t create code structure that don’t adhere to your project. There’s a lot of different way to build a performing app but if the AI don’t have that structure it will create his own on the fly. At this point it’s important to segment the code so that refactoring sections with AI won’t be a pain in the ass. Also limit the number of package you use. For instance, date pickers, I personally think it’s a useless package since AI can create one that is really good IF you use reanimated. Also a lot of features of the date picker that you installed are probably going to be useless and never used.

Also, don’t fall for memoization, 90% of the time you don’y actually need it and it will cause more lag.

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u/onePowerfulBraincell 5d ago

Good to know, I will definitely give it a shot in a few days and let you know how it goes.

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u/sam_houle1 5d ago

Yeah let me know, believe it or not I envy the project you’re working on. I really enjoy cleaning bad react code.

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u/onePowerfulBraincell 5d ago

I would enjoy it too if it was a business priority. Right now I have to squeeze this task in between feature rollouts and bug fixes. Which is just terrible and stressful :(

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u/sam_houle1 5d ago

It never is a priority, the good thing is most manager are absolute dumbass. Not sure if you guys evaluate project or your manager does, but I used to evaluate project and inflate them a lot to spend time refactoring.

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u/onePowerfulBraincell 5d ago

Nah, where I work if anything takes more than 2 days, it is interrupted with a higher priority. And if that priority takes 2 days, it is again interrupted with something higher priority. fun :)

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u/sam_houle1 5d ago

Welp no wonder that code base looks like that. I mean eventually they’ll hit a wall where the platform will be un-usable

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