Learning React Native the hard way — two weeks, one Figma file, no shortcuts.
Chatapp is a React Native and Expo mobile application offering a real-time chat experience with a modern interface. With basic features like text conversations and contact lists already covered, the real focus was building clean architecture, tight performance, and disciplined React Native practices.
As someone whose full-stack instincts leaned toward web technologies, adapting to the React Native ecosystem inside a two-week window — squeezed around a full course load — was the core challenge. The backend was never fully built out in this window; the goal was a solid, well-architected frontend foundation.
I chose Expo as the development platform for how quickly it let me iterate, working early mornings before class and late nights after finishing assignments. Starting from a Figma design handed off by my brother, I translated each UI component into code with attention to visual precision.
The result is a modular component system where every core chat UI element can be maintained and reused independently — a frontend built less to ship a full product and more to internalize how production-grade React Native architecture actually works.
