devin-abbot_deco-ide.md

username	question
vcarl	hey guys!! @dabbott is here to answer some questions about Deco software's react native IDE
	please start questions with Q&A] so i can find them more easily later
dabbott	hi all!
vcarl	if you haven't heard of it, their website is https://www.decosoftware.com/, and the video is pretty dope
dabbott	lemme add a profile photo... lol
	better
vcarl	[Q&A] how's development going? i see you're still in a closed beta, somebody in here mentioned that they've been waiting for a while for a beta key
dabbott	We're gonna officially launch next Wednesday!
	It'll be free and open source
	So... development is going pretty well, I'd say
charliesbox	wohoo!
vcarl	oh that's super awesome
dabbott	we did the beta thing to iron out bugs. it's not perfect, but it's reasonably stable, so it should be ok to have a lot more people try it out
vcarl	"reasonably stable" is more than i could ever say about eclipse haha
dabbott	hahaha, yeah. it's more stable than eclipse
	I'm not sure if that's saying much
vcarl	quite a tagline, "more stable than eclipse!"
westcode	great work, just seen the video looks very nice to work with 😃
dabbott	Here's a more up-to-date screenshot
charliesbox	[Q&A] what was the hardest goal to accomplish in deco's development?
dabbott	hmmm... there are a few things that come to mind
	1. Getting the text editor to be sensible about JSX/ES6/React stuff. And other text editor features in general. This is a LOT of work
	Even though we use CodeMirror (open source), there's a lot we had to do custom
	2. Working with the environment stuff is super tricky. Watchman, running the iOS simulator... basically anything that touches the operating system. Very poorly documented.
	3. We have an innovative feature where you can manipulate anything in your code... in realtime! But it has a lot of issues.
	Some of them still unsolved.
	We have some good ideas for solutions, but first want to see if people use it
	Those 3 are the hardest things that come to mind
westcode	[Q&A] will deco be available for windows?
adri	[Q&A] thanks for the screenshot, looking great. Is Deco a OS X app? Will it be available for other platforms?
	Good question @westcode haha
dabbott	It won't be for Windows on Wednesday. But it's written on Electron, so porting it to windows shouldn't be too bad.
westcode	@adri 😉
dabbott	I'm hoping someone can cantribute windows support, since it's not really my area of expertise 😉
	So, it's an "OSX App" but it's actually written with React + Redux
	It just looks like OSX thanks to careful CSS.
	Even if it ran on windows.... it will look like OSX.
adri	Great thanks
vcarl	[Q&A] how well does the insert mode shown off work, in your experience? is that video sped up? it seems too fast for it to account for npm install 😃
dabbott	Haha, the video isn't sped up at all, but there is some demo magic going on.
	In our first version, we actually hot reloaded over a separate websocket
	So changes would be ~30ms to see on the screen
	Now we use the hot reload which is part of RN (it wasn't in master at the time)... and it's ~300ms or more 😦
	So it's a little slower now
	But in terms of inserting components with npm dependencies
	you're right - you will have to wait for it to npm install
	still lightyears faster than doing it manually - and of course, if it's a RN-core thing, you don't need to npm install anything
	Overall, this is the feature I like most
adri	[Q&A] seems like a lot of work, how is Deco financed?
dabbott	we raised a small angel round right when we started
	now we'll try to become profitable without taking on more investments
	things may change of course
	but the plan is to do a few things that can help us monetize
	1. tools and services around the IDE (assuming the IDE gets some traction)
	2. expanding into other developer/design tools based on what we've learned
	3. working with companies (we have a few pilot ones we're talking to) to integrate deco into their workflow for prototyping/design/style guide stuff
	we also plan on doing some RN contracting
LucasKA	[Q&A] how far off is Live Testing on Android support?
dabbott	basically, the only thing missing for Android support is a "launch emulator" button
	if you react-native run-android manually, and then use Deco to edit your code files, it will all work
vcarl	[Q&A] any plans to expand to web react? it'd take a lot to make me switch off sublime, but that inserting and the properties might do it
dabbott	we sometimes use Deco for web react 😃
	actually, we sometimes use Deco to edit Deco (very meta)
	we wanna focus on RN and make that experience as good as possible first
	but since we'll be open source if the community really takes the IDE in the React direction, that's fine with us too
	most of it is agnostic to React web/native... and even to React. you could use it with other stuff.
	you probably won't switch of sublime/atom entirely. that's not our goal right now, cause we just can't compete in terms of features and robustness with these tools which have been in development for 5-10 years
	so Deco will be the place you go to prototype ideas or new screens, do visual work, etc
vcarl	that's what i was thinking it would be most useful for, it's cool to hear that's your target
dabbott	I like being in the prototyping/visual space because it means we can try experimental new ideas and see how they work 😃
	A lot of stuff in the IDE is quite different than anything we've seen in other IDEs, and I hope it stays that way
	Although I also think we should try to merge some of our best ideas into Nuclide or whatever makes sense
gtfargo	@dabbott whats a guy gotta do for a beta key to mess with over the weekend? 😉
LucasKA	Serious 😄
dabbott	haha, you should probably wait till the launch Wednesday, but if you really want a key now you can just email me [email protected]
	seriously though, wait till Wednesday 😉
	our current build is missing a lot of my favorite stuff
	i mean, our current production build if you install it today instead of next week
Olliepop	can't wait @dabbott
dabbott	😄
gtfargo	[Q&A] what are your current, top product pains surrounding React Native ?
dabbott	Hmmm... my biggest one is probably docs. Since I've seen/helped a lot of people get started with RN, I've seen people continuously struggle with just getting basic stuff on the screen.
Olliepop	@gtfargo Broken Navigation due to NavigationExperimental being merged in 0.23
dabbott	Navigation is a big one too. I'm not sure what to recommend to people. The old nav stuff is obviously not right, and the new one is still "experimental", I guess
gtfargo	@Olliepop don't think you are required to use navigationexperimental
	As of this week my team has trashed all our efforts of working with old Nav or NavExp and started building a custom one
	Its not easy.
Olliepop	It's definitely heading in the right direction
dabbott	Yeah
	Another big area people struggle with is figuring out how to manage data
	It's always a hodgepodge combination of redux, asyncstorage, realm, a REST API, GraphQL, Firebase, whatever
	which if you know what you're doing is nice cause it's super flexible
	but as a beginner you're not sure what to use or where to start
	and there's no "right way"
westcode	struggling atm :p
dabbott	😛
Olliepop	I always point people towards redux and this boilerplate app: https://github.com/bartonhammond/snowflake/tree/master/src
dabbott	that looks pretty nice
	I'm hoping a few boilerplates will totally dominate
	and we can include them in Deco
	so when you create a new project, you have a few options for setting up the entire app with routing/data
westcode	@Olliepop thanks! i will be checking that out tommorow, docs look good
LucasKA	@Olliepop I used that as the boilerplate for my app, and I think it introduces too many concepts/options at once. Not just in Redux, but also a parse or hapi back end. So out of the gate there's cruft and all the react concepts, plus React Native.
	I started with a react-native init and thought it was much simpler, and then added the things I needed as I needed them.
	and learned them
	Just my opinion on it, not saying it's bad. 😃
dabbott	Anything else?
vcarl	you want to do some feature demos?
	if you have a streaming thing set up
dabbott	I never set one up. Probably can in 5 or so.
vcarl	i'm sure some folks would love to see those fancy new features you were talking about
dabbott	sure. lemme set something up
gtfargo	yeeeeea
westcode	niceeeee
Olliepop	@LucasKA Yes i agree about the backend, that should have been left to a more traditional/vanilla approach.
dabbott	this livecoding.tv thing is pretty complicated
	I'm live here now: https://www.livecoding.tv/dabbott/
	if anyone has specific things they'd like to see, lemme know
gtfargo	👍
gtfargo	errr... idk. can you just show some general ui?
dabbott	sure
	overall UI: files and components on the left
	text editor in center
	properties on right
	properties appear when I add components, or I can manually add by alt+clicking a value in my code
gtfargo	whoa groovy. And that component list, im assuming thats drag-and-drop?
	sweet! where are the external components pulled form? js.coach? or do you curate yourself...
westcode	want much
dabbott	currently curated myself - the list is here:
	https://github.com/decosoftware/deco-components/blob/master/package.json
	we'll figure out something more scalable in the future
gtfargo	Split panes?
dabbott	not yet 😦
	the text editor isn't that awesome
gtfargo	Thats alright, this is really cool. good work @dabbott
dabbott	so that's one of the big reasons why you'll still use sublime/atom for a lot of your core editing
gtfargo	What is that discuss button?
dabbott	you can chat with us other other Deco users on Slack
gtfargo	👍 🎊 🙌
	can those default props that get imported be changed per-project somewhere?
dabbott	hmmm... that's a good idea
	not yet
	the whole component insertion thing works pretty well, but there are a lot of details we might want to revisit
	right now it's actually inserting templates that we made manually
gtfargo	ah
dabbott	but it would definitely be more scalable if we just scanned props (or maybe let authors add) and generated the template from that
	templates have the advantage that they can be more than just React stuff
	like you could insert anything, really
gtfargo	right, dig it.
	what navigation is it using currently?
	or is that done by hand
dabbott	basically I wasn't sure what to do with navigation
	this navbar is done by hand
	its just something I found on npm
	and made a deco template for
	react-native-navbar
	we don't help you much with navigation
	mainly cause I'm not sure what to recommend at the moment
gtfargo	makes sense. At this stage I see deco as an interactive prototyping tool for individual screens. Super helpful for designers for obvious reasons, and helpful when the baton gets passed to a developer since its already coded out to a degree
	I'm excited to give it a whirl, especially since we have a new hire with limited experience starting soon. cool stuff
dabbott	awesome! 😃
	yeah, we think it can help a lot with the strange hand-off from designers to engineers
	possibly even a common ground where both can contribute
gtfargo	for sure. thanks for the demo @dabbott, i'll let others ask questions 😄
dabbott	😄
	anything else from anyone?
	@vcarl should we wrap it up?
westcode	😄
	it looks really nice to use
dabbott	it's pretty fun
	I only show the "good" paths
	so hopefully it's still as awesome when you guys try it next week 😃
westcode	looking forward to it
dabbott	thanks for the questions guys!
westcode	thank you for taking your time 😄
vcarl	yeah seems about over haha
	thanks for coming in! super jazzed to give this a shot
dabbott	awesome, lemme know how it goes after you try it
vcarl	i've never dug into react native before, maybe this will get me over the hump
dabbott	😃 if nothing else you can make an app as amazing as the one I just livestreamed
gtfargo	hahaha
westcode	best app ever
	8D