During our first meeting on Monday, my advisor urged us not to learn new things for our Capstone. Having bumbled around Flutter over the summer, I agreed with him, and took the plunge of switching to React Native.

Daily Updates

September 9, 2024

I managed to install the React Native app on my Google Pixel 8a—both in Expo Go and as a native Android app (that still requires a Metro connection to work). I needed a native app because I'm interfacing with HealthConnect data, which Expo Go doesn't support yet.
Not a project-related update, but I received sudden news around dinner time that I had to be back in San Francisco by October 5 or risk losing my post-graduation work authorization. This was blindsiding to me, and I decided to take Tuesday (Sep 10) away from CycleOS to prepare for my move.

September 13, 2024

I started on the project brief that I had to submit as an assignment. Some parts of the project brief are pending clarifications from my advisor; I will continue working on it next week.

What worked?

My life transition system helped me settle down quickly in Berlin, which in turn helped me think objectively about whether to move to SF and also prepare for the move (booking flights, etc.)
I attended my first boxing class on September 10 and felt excited and humbled to start from zero. It reminded me of the lessons I learned through Hapkido, which has helped me navigate the instability I am currently experiencing as well as motivate me to work on my app. I will continue boxing at least 2 times a week, whether I'm in Berlin or San Francisco.

What didn't work, and what can I do better?

7 years of coding have taught me the importance of code organization (patterns like MVC, etc.). Yet, it seems like very few tutorials care about that, and focus only on getting stuff to work.

I end up spending a lot of time sifting through tutorials to see if they actually had some form of code organization. This is not ideal; going forward, I will follow the tutorial first, ensure that I manage to implement all of the required functionalities, and then refactor my code.

Technical Learnings

To install your Expo app natively on your Android device, you must use the zulu JDK they mentioned
Even though your app is installed on your device, it will only work when your device is connected (for me I'm using USB debugging). There should be some way to disable this, but I haven't discovered that yet.