Learn Android, Reactfire and Vim

React Native lets you build mobile apps using only JavaScript. It uses the same design as React, letting you compose a rich mobile UI from declarative components.

react-native

How to add an app icon to your Android app.

For the foreground, you will need an image with a transparent background.

If you wan to create one, you can use [Figma](https://www.figma.com/) which is a free online design tool used in the video. You can use any design tool you like, such as Photoshop, Sketch etc.

[Android Studio](https://developer.android.com/studio) - is the IDE for android development. To open you React Native project in Android studio, launch Android Studio, choose "Open an Existing Android Studio Project" and open the /android directory. 

Add a Custom App Icon to Your React Native Android App with Android Asset Studio

Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to make creating and changing any kind of text very efficient. It is included as "vi" with most UNIX systems and with Apple OS X.

Use the edit command to open files in Vim's normal mode.

Type `:edit`, leave a space and hit `<tab>`.

This brings up a mini file explorer that can be navigated with `<tab>` or the arrow keys...

Open Files in Vim with the Edit Command

Save files in Vim using the write `:write` command in normal mode.
This common command can be abbreviated `:w`.
Use it in tandem with `:q[uit]` to save and quit simultaneously: `:wq`.
The write command can be used with a bang (`!`) to write over read-only files — `:w!`.

Save Files in Vim with the Write Command

Create new files in Vim by creating a new buffer and writing it to disk.

The `:new` command is used — in normal mode — to create new buffers in horizontal splits.
As an alternative, `:vnew` can be used create new buffers in vertical splits.

Create New Files in Vim

You can open files into Vim directly from the terminal. This works for both single files and multiple files. In addition to reading these files into buffers, you can open them as splits or tabs. This video covers the basics of opening files from the terminal…

Open Files into Vim from the Terminal as buffers, splits, and tabs

Help is always at your fingertips in Vim.
Vim's documentation is built right into the editor.
Use the `:help` as a first line of defense before Stack Overflow or Google and you'll be able to spend more time in the editor.

Anything you can do in Vim has a really great `:help` doc...

Find Help in Vim

Quitting Vim is something that thousands of developers struggle with every day. Fortunately, for the astute, Vim tells us how to quit right on the launch screen.

Quitting Vim requires a mindset shift. Where most editors open in a persistent insert mode, Vim defaults default mode is different. It's known as normal mode and it allows you to type commands. Quit is one of those commands...

Launch and Quit Vim

The version of Vim that comes with your operating system is out of date.
You can find download instructions at vim.org for all platforms.
However, the easiest way to get the latest Vim on a mac is with Homebrew…

Install the Latest Vim on a Mac with Homebrew

Vim Videos for Beginners

There are different steps to build an app for the iOS and Android app stores, so here we’ll look at how to build our completed app for Android.  We’ll look at how to build a release for either ad-hoc installation, or for uploading to the Google Play Store.

Build an Android React Native App for the Google Play Store or for Ad Hoc Distribution

For Android, we can connect a physical device that will be autodetected by `react-native run-android`, just like the emulator.  Make sure to shut down the emulator first however - so that only one adb device is connected at a time.

Run a React Native App on an Android Device

Once navigation is setup, we’ll pass data between screens using params.  

Pass Data Between Screens when Navigating with StackNavigator

React Native uses Flexbox to layout most components, which makes it easy to run your app on devices of many different screen sizes.  We’ll learn the basics of Flexbox in React Native, and how to use it to build a flexible screen layout.  We’ll also look at some differences between flexbox on the web and on mobile.

Layout React Native Components with Flexbox

In this lesson we’ll use `fetch` to get data from an HTTP server, and store it in state in our React Native application. `fetch` works almost identically on the web and React Native - with the possible exception of how it handles cookies.  We’ll also take a look at `axios` - which is an alternative to `fetch`.

Fetch Data from an HTTP Server in a React Native Application using fetch or axios

React Navigation’s StackNavigator has a default header, which you may or may not want for your application.  We’ll look at how to totally disable the header, as well as how to customize the default header on a per-screen basis.

Customize the StackNavigator Header with React Navigation in a React Native App

We’ll use React Navigation to add a modal screen to our app, which will pop up from the bottom, and cover the entire screen. 

Add a Modal Screen that Pops Up from the Bottom with React Navigation

If a Text Input is on the bottom half of the screen, then it will get covered by the on screen keyboard when a user selects that input.  We’ll show two ways to automatically avoid this by using `KeyboardAvoidingView` or `keyboard-aware-scroll-view`

Ensure Text Fields Don't Get Covered by the On Screen Keyboard

Once the user submits the form, we’ll take all the information in the text inputs and the camera image, and upload it to our HTTP server.  While the data is uploading, we’ll show the native spinner, and disable the submit button so the user cannot click submit multiple times.

Show a Spinner while Submitting a Form in React Native with ActivityIndicator

We’ll use `AsyncStorage` to save and load simple text data on the device.  `AsyncStorage` is built into React Native (so it’s easy to get working), but it’s text only, it’s global to your app, and it isn’t built to handle large or complex data.  However - it’s perfect for saving and loading small bits of data like settings and configuration values.

Save and Retrieve Data on the Device in a React Native App with AsyncStorage

We’ll replace the default React Native app splash screen with a custom splash screen image on Android.  We’ll also use the `react-native-splash-screen` module to help with the configuration.

Change the Splash Screen for Android Apps built with React Native

One way to style React Native components is with a `StyleSheet`, which was designed to be similar to css.  We’ll go over the differences between React Native styles and web styles, and we’ll create a new StyleSheet, and use it to change the style of components in our app.

Style Components in a React Native App with StyleSheet

 We map over the initial set of results then use `Promise.all` to efficiently fetch the details of each pokemon rendered in the table. This allows us to add more columns to our pokemon table.

Fetch and display row details with Promise.all in Tanstack Table

map over the initial set of results then use `Promise.all` to efficiently fetch the details of each pokemon rendered in the tanstack table

Create a custom hook to fetch remote data by passing a promise to the React 19 `use` hook. Then render this data in Tanstack Table by memoizing the results and passing them to `useReactTable`.

Render remote data in a Tanstack Table with React 19's use hook and a promise

Create a custom hook using React 19’s use to fetch data with a promise. Render it in a Tanstack Table by memoizing and using useReactTable.

You know when you're deep in the code trenches and need someone to challenge your assumptions? That's exactly what this is about.

Instead of waiting for someone to poke holes in your master plan, you can paste that strategy straight into AI Studio and let it pressure test your ideas. We're talking about using this tool to validate everything from your feature proposals to your ambitious refactoring strategies.

The real magic happens when you hit that microphone button. Now you're in a real-time verbal sparring match. It's like rubber duck debugging but the duck actually pushes back and makes you defend every architectural decision you've made.

Here's the workflow:
1. Drop your master plan into the system instructions
2. Tell the AI to challenge every assumption
3. Hit that mic and defend your choices like you mean it
4. Watch your plan either emerge stronger or get rightfully dismantled

This approach is perfect when you're:
- Stuck in your own head with a complex problem
- Need to validate if your approach holds water
- Want to catch edge cases before they catch you
- Looking for opportunities you might have missed because you're too close to the code

It's like having a senior dev on call 24/7, ready to challenge your ideas and push you to think deeper about your solutions.

Now go forth and get your ideas challenged. Your projects will thank you for it.


An Uncomfortable and Challenging Conversation with AI Studio

In this lesson, you'll learn how to effectively brainstorm your project ideas before working with AI agents. We'll cover:

1. The importance of having a clear plan before starting work with AI agents
2. Using traditional brainstorming techniques to gather your thoughts
3. Leveraging video recording to capture your brainstorming session
4. How to review and analyze websites for inspiration
5. Documenting likes, dislikes, and potential features for your project
6. Using AI tools (like AI Studio) to organize and process your recorded brainstorming session

The lesson emphasizes a modern approach to brainstorming that combines traditional techniques with video recording, making it easier to later process your ideas through AI tools. This method helps ensure that no ideas are lost and that your thoughts can be effectively organized by AI for future reference.

How to Brainstorm Your Project Features to Prepare for AI Agents

Many people share .cursorrules files, but trying to craft your own from scratch is a huge pain. Instead, this lesson shows you how to grab ALL community-created .cursorrules files to build a custom rule set for your projects. We'll use Gitingest and Google AI Studio to gather these examples and generate an awesome starting point customized to your specific project.

Generate Custom .cursorrules for Your Project Based on Community Examples

The GitHub CLI allows you to search issues and filter on different criteria like amount of comments. This allows you to search for real-world situations and pains/solutions people have using different technology. 

With the GitHub CLI in hand we'll drop 100s of issues as context in Googles AI Studio and have Gemini determine the 10 most frequently asked questions. This will give us a sense of how people use a library and where people get hung up.

Search 100s of Issues with GitHub CLI as Context for AI Studio

I often find myself wondering how to use certain APIs in certain situations, and I have a couple of keywords that I try and search up on Google. 

What you can do in this situation is turn to GitHub and see how other people have actually used this code on public projects. The GitHub CLI enables us to run searches like this, and we can take the results and work on them programmatically.

Inside of Cursor with their Composer AI agent, we can search for the files we want, tell the agent to download them, and inspect them for better understanding of how those things work together.

Search All of GitHub's Code and Pass the Results to AI Agents in Cursor

Implement virtual scrolling to handle large datasets in an HTML table. Start with a basic table that renders 10,000 rows of data. The browser can struggle with this amount of DOM nodes to render at one time, especially on low end devices. 

We implement tanstack react virtual to render only the necessary amount of rows the user is viewing. The implementation includes proper column sizing, accessibility considerations, and convenient scroll controls, resulting in a smooth and performant table experience regardless of the dataset size.

Create a row virtualized HTML table with Tanstack Virtual

Learn how to implement virtual scrolling in React tables using TanStack Table and Tanstack Virtual with the useWindowVirtualizer React hook.

The most difficult tasks will require the strongest AI models. And those models simply aren't available as AI agents inside of your tooling. So the best workflows are to drag and drop the files you need to be changed and analyzed inside of a reasoning model such as OpenAI's O1 Pro, then letting it create a giant plan for your dumber AI agents to work on. The key here is that instead of just copying and pasting the entire plan into Cursors Composer or your AI agent, it's to create a file inside of your project and ask your agent to tackle the plan one step at a time. This allows you ample opportunity between each step to test and verify the micro steps along the way. Otherwise, as I've experienced many times, a session can go way off track and you burn a lot of time and burn a lot of AI requests Cursors Composer and it starts churning through a plan Cursors Composer and making lots of unwanted changes. Cursors Composer and it's to guide an AI agent to hold its hand along the way, especially through the most complex tasks. Cursors Composer and the most complex tasks Cursors Composer and the most complex tasks require a step-by-step plan.

Planning AI Agent Sessions with Reasoning Models

AI agents will inevitably make mistakes—it's just a matter of when. A key tool in your toolbox, once they do make mistakes after working on a problem for a while, is to use **git diff** to capture all of the changes they've made. 

Once you have those changes in a text file, you have a portable document that you can test against other AI models. This allows you to move the problem into smarter reasoning models with smaller context windows, helping you isolate and focus on the issue at hand.

**git diff** has been invaluable when working with AI agents because they'll often make many good changes but also slip in one tiny error. Finding that one small mistake is **git diff**’s superpower.

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