Bringing Swift to React Native with Gary Tokman | Rocket Ship 037

In this episode, Simon interviews Gary Tokman, CEO at Candle, about his experience with React Native and building a personal finance app. Gary shares his background in iOS development and how he transitioned to React Native. He discusses the technology stack used in Candle, and the three main problems of React Native apps. Gary also shares his latest packages Faster Image and Blur View, along with a new library for Push notifications.

Learn React Native - https://galaxies.dev

Gary Tokman
Gary Twitter:   / f6ary  
Candle: https://candle.fi

Links
SST: https://sst.dev/
Candle on Github: https://github.com/candlefinance
Skip: https://skip.tools/

Takeaways
- The React Native community faces challenges with maintaining packages, especially when it comes to finding the right package that works and is actively maintained.
- React Native faces three main challenges: Concurrency, Presentation, and API Support
- Gary works on several OS projects to bring Swift power to React Native apps
- Front-end development in Candle involves client-side architecture, which presents challenges in balancing performance and processing large amounts of data on the device.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Background
03:00 Transition to React Native
06:41 Technology Stack: Backend and Frontend
11:05 React Native Technology Stack
20:07 Challenges with React Native
25:11 Recommendation and Open Source Packages
30:22 React Native Packages and Maintenance
34:22 Maintaining Open Source Packages
37:19 Open Source Packages: Push, OpenAI, and Real-Time
39:22 Motivation for Open Source Contributions
49:44 Challenges of Front-End Development in Candle