Let's Talk About Tech #1

Why to upgrade to react-native v0.59

As you might already know we also use react-native to develop our mobile apps for iOS and Android. Now it is also possible e.g. to use new React hooks in react-native. More important insights can be found here:

https://reactnative.thenativebits.com/courses/upgrading-react-native/upgrade-to-react-native-0.59/

Use the MacBook Pro touchbar efficiently

Display macOS Dock in Touch Bar - It’s free and open source! Very helpful tool for all the MacBook Pro users: https://pock.pigigaldi.com/

How to use VSCode Prettier only for specific languages

I just spent two hours struggling to import an sql-database-dump. The syntax errors I encountered were introduced by my Prettier plugin which was automatically formatting my sql-file on save. Solution: Active the formatOnSave setting only for specific languages. Excerpt from my settings.json:

"editor.formatOnSave": true, "[sql]": { "editor.formatOnSave": false }

How to do Shadows in React Native cross platform

This sounds easy, but it’s not. On iOS you can define shadow the way you’re used to in normal CSS. But android only accepts elevation shadows. It’s just a number and the higher it is, the stronger the shadow. We found a nice little tool to make sure that you get the same shadow on both platforms:

https://ethercreative.github.io/react-native-shadow-generator/

VSCode performance using TypeScript and styled-components

If your are struggling with a slow VS Code editor in the latest version of TypeScript there is a quick solution:

Use the latest TypeScript version: yarn upgrade typescript@next

If your are also using styled components for react than you have to upgrade the types as well yarn upgrade @types/styled-components

Then reload your VS Code and everything should be fine again. There are a lot of issues on VS Code and they will fix it within the next release.

Recommend development podcast

A podcast with really relevant information about web technology and stuff around it. Funny and interesting insights of the world of web development.

https://syntax.fm/

VSCode plugin: turbo-console-log

You want to debug your code quickly? And create a lot of console.log in your code? Then this plugin for VSCode editor saves you a lot of time.

https://github.com/Chakroun-Anas/turbo-console-log

Send emails via AWS SES + attachment

A helpful description using AWS Lambda and sending emails including an attachment from S3 bucket. Simple and easy configuration using SES in our AWS stack with attachments.

https://medium.com/@xoor/sending-emails-with-attachments-with-aws-lambda-and-node-js-e6a78500227c

Today we started with Let’s Talk About Tech #1 with some of our insights from the last few weeks. If you’re having any thoughts on our blog post, feel free to comment, vote, discuss with us or just share it.