alt.hn

3/23/2026 at 9:02:05 AM

Digs: iOS app that syncs your Discogs collection and lets you browse it offline

 https://lustin.fr/blog/building-digs/

by rlustin

3/24/2026 at 10:32:49 AM

Curious why you didn't go native when it's undoubtedly reaper than the stack you chose. The default blank navigation view project would get you 80% of the way with its couple dozen lines of code. And you would get system font, SwiftUI predictable layout, easy database access, and a smaller Binary by a factor of 10x most likely.

by msephton

3/24/2026 at 11:02:05 AM

Fair question. I know TypeScript, I don’t know Swift. This was my first mobile app and Expo lowered the barrier enough for me to actually ship it. I’m sure native would have been leaner, but I’d probably still be reading SwiftUI docs instead of having an app on the App Store.

by rlustin

3/23/2026 at 9:07:04 PM

Love this given my favorite record store is in a basement with bad cell service!

by cauterize

3/23/2026 at 9:11:32 PM

I love it!

by rlustin

3/24/2026 at 12:22:49 AM

Lovely! Thank you

by davidhariri

3/24/2026 at 8:34:48 AM

Cheers!

by rlustin

3/23/2026 at 6:27:00 PM

Blog title lacks iOS: "Building Digs, an offline Discogs companion"

And it's a RN app:

> It’s a React Native app built with Expo and TypeScript. Data lives in SQLite.

by hu3

3/23/2026 at 8:28:40 PM

Fair enough on the iOS mention. The tech stack (React Native, Expo, TypeScript, SQLite) is detailed in the blog post, I wasn't trying to hide it.

As others pointed out in the thread, RN renders actual native views, not a webview. For this use case: browsing a local SQLite database offline, it works really well.

by rlustin

3/23/2026 at 7:07:37 PM

What's wrong with React Native? I don't quite get your point there.

by ZeWaka

3/23/2026 at 7:11:25 PM

Speculating - but an iOS app that's build on React Native is not really a 'native iOS app'. Which might have some performance implications etc.

Just speculating, I've not done mobile development since before RN was even a thing.

by Insanity

3/23/2026 at 8:33:33 PM

Funny enough this was my first mobile app ever, I figured it out doing it. Expo helped a lot. The Apple review process on the other hand… that was a whole learning experience on its own.

by rlustin

3/23/2026 at 10:03:19 PM

God I feel you here, that first review is always brutal.

by coffeecantcode

3/23/2026 at 7:35:31 PM

RN does use a lot of native code. It’s not based on a webview like Electron is. Most of the builtin components are native views and there’s no CSS. The JS engine is also simpler. It’s more akin to the lua runtime in Neovim.

by skydhash

3/23/2026 at 8:07:59 PM

Ah, I did not know that. I thought it was more Electron-like.

by Insanity

3/24/2026 at 12:27:41 AM

It’s a fair assumption. The React part is more about copying JSX and other React concepts (declarative UI etc) but it all boils down to native binaries. The toolchain is also pretty nice. It does hot reloading so you don’t have to recompile the app while building locally. The downside is you get less for free compared to SwiftUI. But SwiftUI also has many footguns and bugs. No free lunch!

by davidhariri

3/23/2026 at 7:45:06 PM

Quite a lot. Enough that it isn't realistic to ask this in good faith

by monster_truck

3/24/2026 at 12:56:32 AM

This could’ve been a nice native lickable app, as befitting for what it does.

Instead, and I’m not against AI, AI slop that isn’t native, has awful design and awful font decisions.

Someone should take the idea but implement it properly.

And a Cover Flow view is a must.

by trvz

3/24/2026 at 8:34:09 AM

The AI wrote the code, but the design decisions are 100% mine, I’m going through a monospaced phase.

Cover Flow would look cool but I’m not sure it solves a real problem for this use case. When you’re digging through crates you want to search and filter fast, not swipe through covers. Appreciate the feedback though!

by rlustin

3/23/2026 at 9:11:50 PM

How'd you design the icon/logo for it?

by dnlzro

3/23/2026 at 9:17:35 PM

Not a designer at all, I used recraft.ai and iterated until I got something I liked.

by rlustin

3/23/2026 at 10:24:27 PM

What do you recommend beyond React Native?

by ebuyan

3/24/2026 at 8:29:48 AM

This was my first mobile app so I can’t really compare, but Expo was a great way to get started with zero mobile experience. That said, I did feel a bit locked into their ecosystem. Everything is designed to push you toward their cloud build service (EAS), and I just wanted to build locally.

by rlustin

3/23/2026 at 6:31:18 PM

That’s fun!

by imagetic

3/23/2026 at 8:34:22 PM

Thanks!

by rlustin