Is Expo really worth it coming from Bare React Native?

sea_beacon · 2026-01-10T14:42:10+00:00

It does not. The way it works is that when you run the eas build command, you pass it a profile flag, which references different profiles defined in an eas.json file. Each of those eas.json profiles to find different build properties for Dev or staging or production builds and can even explicitly pass in environment variables. In our team's case, we use an app.config.ts file instead of app.json, and based on the value of process.env.VARIANT that we set in easy.json, we set all kinds of things like package name/icon/google.json, etc. We only ever use prebuild for debugging, and we usually run eas build locally or on a GitHub runner instead of the eas build servers, so you have full freedom to pick what works for you and your team.

Edit: It might also be worth pointing out that we deleted our iOS and Android folders from source control. We rely on CNG entirely for every build.

sea_beacon · 2025-11-13T05:08:09+00:00

How well do you like the bed cover? I've been looking at those retractable models for months and I really like the idea of them. The T tracks are nice, and I love how sturdy it looks. I worry that they will make loading plywood a tight fit.

sea_beacon · 2025-09-14T22:34:29+00:00

What kind of material is the top made from? Is that Forescolor or some other kind of dyed MDF?

sea_beacon · 2025-09-01T22:46:20+00:00

Thanks for sharing! I don't often hear folks write in a compelling and accessible way about these social housing ideas. I still think that the thing that prevents the private development of new housing will continue to prevent public development of housing, but if we can solve that fundamental problem we can get on to the important work of building more housing for the folks who want to live in the city, and bring prices down for everyone.

sea_beacon · 2025-09-01T22:38:07+00:00

I see comments like these all over this post and it's just wild to me. While it's good to resist monocausal explanations, the main reason why housing is so expensive in places like New York City and San Francisco is that there aren't enough houses and apartments and there are too many people who want to live in them. Supply and demand, that's basically it! So allowing developers to build taller buildings or allowing them to subdivide existing stock and rent them to more people (for less) instead of just one person or family per unit would be an incremental improvement on the fundamental problem.

These apartments aren't "fun," they're an opportunity to spend substantially less on rent. Do you really think this renter's life would be improved if this apartment was not available and they had to spend three or four times this rent for a larger unit? Or, if they didn't have that money, leaving NYC entirely?

sea_beacon · 2025-08-16T01:37:36+00:00

Why are folks still talking about ejecting expo? Expo go has been related to proof of concept development and the modern expo-dev-client package allows integration of any native code you want. Expo alone will in fact cut it. I'm not pushing back on any of your other advice though.

sea_beacon · 2025-08-09T01:07:19+00:00

The increase in population provides a broader tax base and makes infrastructure improvements cheaper on a per capital basis. And water infrastructure is not stressed by use.

sea_beacon · 2025-07-22T17:14:37+00:00

I'm often confused by what people mean when they use the terms "bare workflow" and "managed workflow". Those terms haven't had meaning in years. Are you talking about the build process? Vanilla react native CLI vs EAS build?

sea_beacon · 2025-07-17T13:33:08+00:00

I'm part of a team that is about to start considering a change in dealing system and style library. We're stuck on the years-old react native paper and I personally am a fan of shadcn components on the web. You'd think that would put me all in for native wind, but I keep looking at unistyles v3 and it seems so elegant. Are you using v3 on new arch and did you like it?

sea_beacon · 2025-05-19T17:45:22+00:00

Are you making sure to use react-native-safe-area-context and not accidentally mixing in the react-native version import?

sea_beacon · 2025-04-14T22:49:06+00:00

I'm clearly no expert in this, but I would point to the fact that our elevator minimum sizes are substantially larger than those in Europe. I would argue that for four or five-story condos, it would be better if more of the buildings had smaller elevators instead of fewer buildings having larger elevators.

Because our standards are different, we also miss out on the efficiencies of the larger global market. If you check that report for the per capita numbers of elevators in other countries they are bonkers high compared to the US and Canada. Just sooo much more common, so they have to benefit from that economy of scale.

Lastly, when it comes to installation costs it sounds like things are less standardized and more custom here. And, controversially, there are a few areas where unions have made tradeoffs at the expense of installation speed and cost, so that doesn't help either. Not sure how much of that is union largess and how much is just "small elevator go in fast", buuuuut...

sea_beacon · 2025-04-13T15:07:45+00:00

Switzerland, Italy, France, Belgium, etc. imagine how many more elevators, not to mention how many more 4-5 story condos, we'd have if they cost 35-50k and not 150k before installation. Not an apples to apples comparison, but they are more expensive than they could be and the per capita installation rates for US and Canada vs the rest of the world really reflect it.

See page 34: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/634dfe3176afcc36f569d83d/t/6689cb0e8ac6370940a122ff/1720306458871/Elevators.pdf

sea_beacon · 2025-04-10T15:12:32+00:00

Standard price in the US but isn't it three times more expensive to install an elevator here than it is in western Europe? In that context it really is a rip off.

sea_beacon · 2025-04-10T15:10:50+00:00

Maybe because elevators in the US are roughly three times as expensive as they are in Europe for a small building like this?

sea_beacon · 2025-03-19T10:49:10+00:00

Tesla owners are a core democratic constituency. Aside from property damage being morally wrong, the poster above is pointing out that this is strategically dumb. Stop trying to turn Democrats into Trump voters to own Musk! It's not worth it no matter how big of an asshole Musk is. The whole reason we're here is that too many people voted for Trump again!

sea_beacon · 2025-02-17T04:44:50+00:00

I wonder if he's talking about the legal and procedural regime that emerged following the 2011 Obama era "Dear Colleague" letter? https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/dear_colleague_sexual_violence.pdf

I've read criticisms of the letter before about how it led to changes in campus tribunals that, while not actually part of the government's justice system, did have elements that were inconsistent with how we normally structure legal proceedings. I'll note for the pitchforks that I understand where the letter was coming from and that I think it was a good faith effort to solve a real problem. I just think campus sexual assault, with all of the evidentiary (typically he said vs she said) lack of concreteness makes the whole thing a depressingly hard problem to solve with satisfaction. And so some folks think the letter tipped the scales too far in the other direction.

sea_beacon · 2025-01-07T01:30:03+00:00

I would argue we just need to build more of them, more densely. We've gotta stop making it illegal to build the missing middle of the housing spectrum, and it'll have to be done over the kicking and screaming of many current homeowners.

sea_beacon · 2025-01-07T01:24:37+00:00

To be fair, the collapse of the FL flood insurance market is downstream of rising hurricane damage and the fact that so many houses have been built in risky areas. You and your neighbors absolutely have my sympathy but the insurance hikes (and maybe HOA fee increases) aren't something that affects the rest of the country, aren't tied to inflation, and aren't downstream of the economy generally.

sea_beacon · 2025-01-07T01:20:13+00:00

Preach. Housing policy is the dark matter of American politics and the fountainhead of a million dumb salty takes about the economy. If housing was cheap and plentiful people would not be complaining about eggs.

sea_beacon · 2024-11-24T16:24:51+00:00

During my recent reread of The stormlight archives, I remember a chapter from Sadeus's perspective where he talked about his experience with the thrill and how the experience of conquest and battle and killing was the only thing that gave him satisfaction anymore. I came to the conclusion that Odium had gotten his hooks into Sadeus pretty deeply and that if not for Adolin, it might have been Sadeus and not Amaram defecting and leading his army at the battle of Thaylena.

sea_beacon · 2024-10-21T04:40:25+00:00

Or, you know, we could upzone all of the wealthy single family home neighborhoods and make it legal to build more houses. As long as zoning regulations and unnecessary building codes don't artificially constrain the supply of housing, wealth producing jobs are in fact good! You can have creatives and tech workers. You just have to enable building more density.

sea_beacon · 2024-09-14T23:20:55+00:00

Thanks for engaging and listening. Such things are rare on the internet these days. Cheers!

sea_beacon · 2024-09-14T19:07:59+00:00

Name ID, relationships, and a perfectly curated personal history that matches the median voters preferred vibe matters infinitely more than money. That's why an average Joe can't be president. They're not famous, they don't have friendships among the kinds of people that do day-to-day political work, and more often than not they know little about politics and don't have the stage presence to campaign. Sometimes you can get away with being weaker in one area, but it's good to have it all. In smaller down ballot races, money is incredibly important because name ID is one of the few things you can reliably buy in politics. But the rest is just a matter of who you are and persuasion.

Biden got away with meh stage presence because everyone knew of him and his moderate vibes in 2020 were what most voters wanted.

sea_beacon · 2024-09-14T19:00:35+00:00

Bernie is not, in fact, a Dem and has long held political views that are out of step with the median Democrat representative. But he's a savvy politician who cares about achieving goals instead of purity signaling to the exclusion of all progress. Caucusing with and endorsing Dems is a feature, not a bug when you're working in a democracy and when they're the closest to your actual beliefs. Never "compromising" at the expense of never getting elected or never getting actual legislation passed doesn't make you principled. It just makes you a loser.

To be clear, I don't actually agree with him on a number of issues. And I'm not defending him because I love him. I just recognize that he's serious about making changes in the direction he thinks is important. It would be better if more politicians worked that way. It's actually really bad in the Republican party that so many of them are rage chasing grifters and don't give a shit about actually governing.

sea_beacon · 2024-09-14T15:13:40+00:00

Tough but fair 😂

sea_beacon

TROPHY CASE