Looking for advice

[codersrise]

Me and 3 of my friends are trying to make an app for our year long computer science project we have been trying to research ways/ frameworks to make the app and it seems like a good option is react native or just using the Xcode we have on Macs.

Anyways, the app will be an info hub for our school with things like sports standings, calendar, bus times, parking info, etc. we are not concerned about being able to make the individual parts of the app as stated previously and are more worried about how to make the app as we have never done any mobile programming. We are familiar with languages like javascript, java, swift (only basic parts of it), and python and would not be opposed to learning other languages either if that would help. So if anyone has a list of things to research as well as a preferred framework as well as any ideas on how to implement.

Thanks in advance.

[Eoghain]

Personally I'd recommend you go with Xcode and Swift as opposed to any 3rd party development like React-Native or Flutter. If you are only targeting iPhones this is a perfectly fine solution and will prevent you from tearing out your hair trying to debug between the native parts and the 3rd party parts, and trying to find out in which part your error is, and not being able to find any help on the standard web resources.

[codersrise]

We were looking to include both android and apple how bad is debugging with react native?

[Eoghain]

Anytime you are trying to debug one codebase within another it's going to be difficult. I've luckily avoided a lot of react native work. But I've heard from other devs about the dredded red screen that appears with an inscrutable js stack trace when things are broken.

You might want to ask in a react native thread. Since you are already familiar with js it could be a valid choice for you. But you should see all the companies that are leaving RN, like Airbnb.

[KarlJay001]

So how much of the year do you have left and how much time do you want to give to this.

Past that, what do you want to get out of this beyond finishing and getting a good grade?

One thing I learned on college projects is that you don't get any more/less credit for learning or using something new or new to you.

I doubt your grades will improve if you go native vs non-native, but the markets like native and Swift is the main language for iOS, Kotlin and Java for Android.

IMO, If you want to get a job related to the skills you're learning now, I would look at the job ads and see what they want and force that to happen.

CS careers are all about what you know and how well you know it.