What I Learned Making an App for My Family

Re:What I Learned Making an App for My Family by DreaminDani on Wednesday May 06, 2026 @07:57PM (#48043563)

Great writeup and also a great example of where LLMs can step in to help fill the gaps in areas where you don't have as much skill or interest. For instance, your wife used ChatGPT to come up with a name and you used AI to generate the admin flows that you weren't interested in building.

Sounds like Flutter was a good technology choice too, given its flexibility across platforms. As a designer, I know how frustrating it can be that the Google and Apple interface guidelines aren't too prescriptive but patterns vary so much across domains, that it's better to do what you did and evaluate what others do to solve similar problems. Great work!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:What I Learned Making an App for My Family by avicado0o on Thursday May 07, 2026 @05:32AM (#48047310)

Flutter was good, but now with Liquid Glass™ I find react native (specifically expo) using expo-ui far far better at designing apps that match their native look and feel.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:What I Learned Making an App for My Family by chabad360 on Thursday May 07, 2026 @07:04AM (#48047948)

Heh, this is indeed rather unfortunate. Right as I finally got the look and feel to a relatively polished point, Liquid Glass dropped, making it rather obsolete. But to be honest, the app doesn't feel that out of place anyway. I don't know if that says something about me or about Liquid Glass, but it does say something.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:What I Learned Making an App for My Family by realusername on Friday May 08, 2026 @05:11AM (#48060601)

Native look is just a debate among developers, none of the top 10 apps use native look and I never heard any user care either.

Personally I find that it's not using Liquid Glass an advantage, at least I don't need to worry about contrasts.

[ Parent | on HN ]