What happened with WoWs Info?

WoWs Info is an important chapter in my life. I started the development in early February 2017 during my uni life. At some point, I put too much time and effort into it and ended up failing multiple courses at UNSW. It was responsibility, I had to be responsible for my users. Maybe, I pushed it too far. It was a great lesson for me. Sometimes, I need to put down, the so called responsibility.

The last update of WoWs Info was 3 years ago. Just after my graduation, I had time to continue working on it. Even after I landed my job, I was still trying to have a new version. It all started with Swift 2.0 as a native iOS app. Then, I moved to React Native and eventually Flutter. I have always been thinking about what an app is truly about.

See, JavaScript is almost everywhere. Performance is no longer a critical issue. What can be done in JavaScript will be done in JavaScript. React Native was my solution to cross both iOS & Android platforms. The production app is still using this technology. However, I was never happy with my app. After switching to React Native, the app doesn’t feel like an iOS app or Android app. Yes, I can spend years styling it like iOS or Android, but it is very challenging for an individual developer.

Flutter seemed to be the solution because it looks the same no matter where it runs. If I cannot make it native, then why not make it consistent and run on everything instead? However, looking exactly the same won’t work for tablets, web and desktops. If I simply scale it up, it looks like a phone app on a huge screen. This is not something I want, especially for iPad users.

After working for 3 years, I slowly found the beauty of native apps. All the details Apple & Google have polished for iOS & Android are not something I can easily mimic. It just feels weird if an app is done using a WebView, no matter how nice it looks.

2023 is a rather busy year for me, but I want to have one final attempt to rebuild the iOS version of WoWs Info like in 2017 with SwiftUI and Kotlin Multiplatform. The Android version needs to wait sadly. 7 years ago, I wanted to take the shortcut, but in the end, there is never a shortcut. That shortcut I took was a long way towards the beginning. It was great that I learnt React Native, Flutter and Swift, Kotlin. Now, I finally have the skills needed to build a mobile app.