Stir Trek v6

I feel like there are two apps I’m constantly rewriting: LexiTiles and Stir Trek. They’re both good for learning frameworks and sometimes they necessitate changes.

This time I rewrote my Stir Trek app. Well, wrote is more appropriate. Nothing in the new app is taken from any of the old apps. Still, it’s out there and I should probably explain.

Stir Trek

In case you missed any of my earlier posts, Stir Trek is a one-day conference focused on developers in Columbus, OH. The sessions are always fun and it ~always~ usually ends with a screening of the latest Marvel movie.

2020 was …weird… so Stir Trek didn’t happen. 2021 ended up being an online-only affair (which was still great, just different). For 2022, it’s back in full force, movie and all.

The Previous Apps

Like I said, this app (or app concept, really) has a history:

1. v1 used Ionic 1 and AngularJS.
2. v2 also used Ionic 1 and AngularJS. It was rewritten due to a different data source. I believe this was the only one I released to the App/Play Stores.
3. v3 again used Ionic 1 and AngularJS. Again, the data source changed so v2 was quickly patched to pull the new data. Since this was done so quickly, it was not released to any stores and was only available as a PWA.
4. v4 was an experiment using modern Angular (no suffix). It was a PWA again.
5. v5 wasn’t called v5, but rather “Stir Trek Core”. It was an experiment using Blazor (and .NET Core, hence the name). Again a PWA.
6. v6 is the new one that this post is about!

The New App

I’ve been learning and using React at work for a while now, and I’ve also been experimenting with modern Ionic. I have a couple of apps that are really only for my use that have a good “framework” approach. Basically I’ve figured out how I would like to see an Ionic/React app structured, so after some copying/pasting this app was up and running. It was honestly incredible how fast I was able to get this from zero to working. Then after some polish and clean up, I submitted it to the iOS App Store.

You can download it here.

I also published it to stirtrek.moscardino.net since Ionic apps can also be PWAs.

Where’s the Android version? Not available, sorry. I don’t have the toolchain fully set up to build Android apps and I don’t really want to go through all that trouble. The PWA should work great for Android folks, since Google actually supports that kind of stuff.

Some Thoughts on Ionic/React

• Ionic and React complement each other well. The entire ecosystem is just nice to work in.
• The more I work with React, the more I find myself really understanding it and the more I enjoy it.
• Ionic’s documentation could use some work. There’s lots that still references Cordova when Capacitor is the recommended approach. Plus is could use more examples of how the different components can be combined rather than showing them all in isolation.
• Ionic needs some more utility classes like Bootstrap has. It doesn’t need to go full-Tailwind, but some more would be nice.

Also the repo is public, so you can see how it’s all built.