this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
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Memmy - An iOS client for Lemmy
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I apologize. I hoped/figured you guys could take honest criticism (since it comes from a place of wanting you guys to do better and is completely constructive).
IMO, you currently have the best app for Lemmy. As a fellow dev, I'd want to hear brutally honest opinions of my app no matter how much it hurts...and it should hurt (as much as a dose of reality does) because this app has all the red flags that point to mounting and unmanageable state and complexity. Good luck refactoring it and I promise to also be as unbridled about my praise as I was about my criticism.
In the future, I promise to disguise my harsh criticisms and tech stack preferences so I don't hurt your feelings.
Happy to get criticism, but this sentence was not constructive in any way:
Sorry we don't know Swift, but I assume the same thing could happen in Swift if you started rewriting the entire state management in a Swift app. We chose to write it in React Native because we both know JS/React, but we wanted to focus on iOS because that's what we use. Saying it's partially our fault for not using Swift is not constructive.
In my book, that is actually a constructive critique. I am constructively telling you that javascript and react native are bad candidates for this type of thing and that I think it would benefit you long-term to switch to a native tech stack. As long as you didn't personally invent javascript or react native, you shouldn't be offended. I guess you could be offended if you simply refuse to learn swift while developing an app built solely for iOS but that's not on me.
You should read the book Radical Candour. It will help you provide critical feedback in a respectful and empathic way. Saying “as a fellow dev…” is not a hall pass to light somebody’s work on fire, crap on their tech stack decisions, and claim your opinion is fact.
Strong opinions are good. I appreciate strong opinions. I have many of my own. And i know you’re excited for this app and that it’s become a daily staple for you so you want it to succeed. But React Native is not a bad technology stack. In its nearly 10 years it has evolved and improved dramatically. Huge apps are written in React Native. I bet you use, or have used, some of them and don’t even know.
Technology is a tool. You can write great software and equally bad software in any language or stack. I’ve used a lot of terrible iOS apps, and I’m sure some of them were written in Swift. A language or tech stack is not inherently bad, and claiming such is not constructive feedback, it’s being an asshole.
Don’t be an asshole.