How's everyone doing?

So, Rails World happened recently, with some strong words (but true ones) from DHH.

In the age of agents, a small team can do way more than before, with technologies that used to be out of reach.

I know Rails because it's the "One Person Framework", and I'm a big believer in independence and small teams. The best products? You can only build them with a handful of people.

Once you start growing, you get sucked into processes, discussions, each one more pointless than the last.

Anyway, that's the vibe right now. Shopify also said they're moving away from React Native to go fully native, because in the age of agents, maintaining two codebases costs next to nothing:

As for me, ViteUneTable is growing, and it's going to need to be on iOS and Android (honestly, mostly iOS, Android users are more used to the web).

What I knew before agents

Before agents, I'd already done quite a bit of mobile development, but I always went for the simplest, fastest approach. And obviously, that wasn't native code. The golden age of Cordova (that piece of s***) and Ionic Framework.

This, for example, was built years ago with Ionic

Then, in the spirit of the "One Man Framework ❤️", I got interested in Ruby Native perfect for getting a little app onto the stores for a restaurant in Nancy.

Yep, you're seeing that right. That app is where ViteUneTable started. ViteUneTable actually exists in two versions:

The first is a fork of the second, actually... I decided to keep two separate codebases because the Marchand version has business logic specific to that restaurant, and it gives us room to experiment.

Rails Native is great, but it's still a webview... with some native stuff cobbled around it. Before agents, when we did everything by hand, it was a good compromise. Although I did have to modify the Rails Native code for the Marchand version, especially because the app is black and Rails Native used white loading screens by default.

Anyway, there was work to do, but it worked pretty well.

So, you're going native for the ViteUneTable app?

Well, no. I'm using Expo / React Native, because "I'm a very small team".

React Native still makes complete sense for a "one man business". I get a native interface, excellent responsiveness, and a single codebase for both mobile platforms.

As for the app's size, well, yeah, the whole Expo SDK is in there, so it's a big baby...

But the compromise isn't bad.

I'd say I'm about 90% of the way to an app I'm happy with. The problem is that restaurants ask for new features on the web pretty much every day. Some make a ton of sense, so they get implemented quickly, and I bring them over to the API and the Expo app at the same time.

The nice thing about Expo is that I can run a "web" version of the app, which lets headless machines debug it. Fire up agent-browser, and the agent can check whether it's done something completely stupid or whether we're looking good (agent-browser, have you heard of it?).

By the way, I'm so obsessed with the details that I burned through my entire Claude Max allowance this week, so I'm using GPT in the meantime 😮.

The takeaway from this post is simple. For small teams, going fully native isn't a crazy idea. The cost doesn't go through the roof, and you get all the benefits of fully native apps (you can't get faster than that).

But for "really tiny teams", 1 or 2 people, technologies like Rails or React Native still make complete sense. You combine the power of a "One Person Framework" with the power of agents.

What does that actually mean?

We now live in a world where anyone can create whatever they want to create. You just need the ideas and to actually make them happen.

Sure, the subscriptions cost €200 a month, but what's €2,400 a year when you can build whatever you want?

Anyway, this year's Rails World was completely in sync with what I'm living right now, and f****...

WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE.