- okay not blockchain that one was a lie but the rest are true
Hi! I HIGHLY recommend you watch the video demo first because it shows a lot more about the flavor of this hack than any text possibly could.
My dad! He is a manager at an aluminum plant and has wanted me to make him an aluminum coil phone app since 2014. He brought it back up last week and when I saw "Useless Hack" was a category I thought "Well golly that's perfectly useless to everyone but him!"
It takes in 8 different variables regarding an industrial aluminum coil and "fills in the blanks" for the other remaining fields. It can also be used for other metals, you just have to change the density. Admittedly, super simple. But incredibly useful if you are the manager of an aluminum plant. Perfectly useless if you are literally anyone else.
I used React Native! I watched enough of a SkillShare tutorial to realize how similar it was to real React and then just started diving into docs. I also made gratuitous use of hooks (specifically useEffect()) and functional components.
Even though Expo makes it simple, I had some issues building since the machine I was working on didn't have Windows Subsystem for Linux installed and I had done all development prior to building just on Windows through PowerShell. There were also some nagging things about React Native that complicated things a bit like the lack of styled components support. I'm not a frontend guy (which should be painfully obvious) so getting the UI set up took longer than I'd like to admit.
I helped my dad! He was the one that wanted this app made as it would help in his job. I had also been wanting to get into mobile for a while so I'm proud that I was able to take it up so quickly.
I had never made and built an Android app before! Expo made it super easy and my prior knowledge with React made the learning curve into React Native super simple. I also went through the whole hassle of making a Google Developer Account and submitting my application to the Play Store (although in current climate it is going to take up to 7 days to get approved). I also learned that I can derive educational value out of something as simple as a calculator app even after being one month away from a bachelor's in computer science.
Believe it or not, I'm gonna keep working on this thing a little. I've got the app in its current state pending approval in the Google Play Store. However, I am planning on releasing a new version with a more custom UI once I settle on a design that I really like. I'm also going to keep working with my dad to implement features relevant to the industry.