DEV Community: Mateo Guzmán

LZ4 – C++ React Native bindings for an extremely fast compression algorithm

Mateo Guzmán — Sun, 06 Oct 2024 21:06:44 +0000

I've been dipping my toes into JSI and C++ lately and, as a result, I got to build a small package called react-native-lz4. It’s a library for fast file compression in React Native using the LZ4 algorithm written in C.

It is still experimental as I'm still polishing the error handling and extending its API but it can already be used (with caution!)

Package: https://github.com/mateoguzmana/react-native-lz4
You can learn more about LZ4 on its website: https://lz4.org/

The package supports both old and new architecture, and currently exposes two main functions to compress and decompress any type of file.

Basic example:

import { compressFile, decompressFile } from 'react-native-lz4';

function onProgress(processedSize: number, totalSize: number) {
  // e.g. { processedSize: 50, totalSize: 100, progress: '50%' }
  console.log({
    processedSize,
    totalSize,
    progress: `${Math.round((processedSize / totalSize) * 100)}%`,
  });
}

const compressionResult = await compressFile(
  'path/to/file',
  'path/to/output',
  onProgress
);
const decompressionResult = await decompressFile(
  'path/to/file',
  'path/to/output',
  onProgress
);

console.log(compressionResult);
// { success: true, message: 'File compressed successfully', originalSize: 100, finalSize: 50 }

console.log(decompressionResult);
// { success: true, message: 'File decompressed successfully', originalSize: 50, finalSize: 100 }

How Do I Code 8 Hours A Day In 2 Simple Steps

Mateo Guzmán — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 09:43:37 +0000

In this article I will tell you how I manage to code 8 hours a day non-stop in two simple steps.

I don’t.
The work of a Software Engineer is not only coding 8 hours straight away. Your brain needs to rest as well. Quality > Quantity.

Thanks for reading.

About me

You can find me on my social media as @mateoguzmana

Animated Balloons With React Native

Mateo Guzmán — Tue, 13 Sep 2022 19:58:15 +0000

Animated balloons are a pretty attractive way of engaging with users. They can be used to attract user’s attention by congratulating them inside your app or by simply celebrating something, for instance. In this article, we will explore how to create animated balloons with React Native.

In the following sections, we will see how to use react-native-fiesta to add some animated balloons into your application with some few lines of code.

react-native-fiesta is a library that provides a set of celebration animations built with @shopify/react-native-skia. The nice thing about this is that Skia offers high-performance 2d graphics for React Native.

Installing Dependencies

The first step is installing react-native-fiesta package which provides us with all the necessary animations for our project. To do that, we need to install it by running the following command:

yarn add react-native-fiesta

react-native-fiesta fully depends on @shopify/react-native-skia so you have to install that package as well. You can do it with the following command:

yarn add @shopify/react-native-skia && npx pod-install

After installation has been completed, we can use the library to add the animated balloons to our app.

Adding Animation Using Fiesta

To do that, we need to import the library in one of our components, we will use the App component as a base:

import React, from 'react'
import { Balloons } from 'react-native-fiesta'

After importing the Balloons from Fiesta, we can proceed to use them:

function App() {
  return <Balloons />;
}

And that’s it, You have some animated balloons in your application. You can use them to celebrate a user’s birthday, a first purchase, a new goal achieved inside the app, or any other thing you might want to celebrate. The options are endless.

Customising Fiesta Balloons

You can also customise the theming of the balloons. Let’s say you want to have a Colombian theme. You can do that by doing the following:

<Balloons theme={["#FCD116", "#003893", "#CE1126"]} />

That’s it!

Fiesta also provides some other themes. You can use them just by importing them:

import { Balloons, FiestaThemes } from 'react-native-fiesta'

…

<Balloons theme={FiestaThemes.Neon} />

And then you will have some animated balloons with some neon colours.

Conclusion

In this post, we have taken a look at how add some animated balloons in React Native using react-native-fiesta. Now you can celebrate with your users and engage with them as never before.

You might be familiar on how Twitter celebrates a birthday in their platform. These balloons are inspired by that.

Travelling & Coding

Mateo Guzmán — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 13:49:33 +0000

In the last couple of years I have been able to travel to multiple countries thanks to programming and also thanks to some companies that have allowed me to work fully remote.

However, not always that I code I do it for companies, I do also enjoy doing some personal projects as well as open sourcing and contributing. That's why I have some fun while doing it, because of my side projects. Without them, there is no really much motivation to just work on your daily things.

Offline Work

Working offline can be benefitial if you are in places with really poor connection or also in case you are in a flight, a train without internet or in a ship in the middle of the ocean and you don't want to pay for internet there.

There are some projects that allow you to work fully offline. I'm not talking about projects company wise but about code projects.

If you have a project which you can fully install locally A.K.A a full-stack, db, server and front-end then you have gold there. Why? You would think this is not really nice, but whilst you are killing time somehow you gain some extra focus (perhaps that's only my case, but there is a change that it is for you too).

Being able to work offline has the advantage of being very productive whilst that's the only thing you can do. In my case because I mostly travel solo that works pretty well. Now, if you are with friends, couple or family, please try to enjoy with them too and don't go to travel just to code. Do it when they are resting or something, respect your company.

Disadvantages; not always is that nice if you are stuck with a bug and you need to search something. In that case being offline sucks because the first thing you want to do is checking Stack Overflow but because you are offline, it's most likely that you will get stuck. In that case, try to switch to something else if you can, or if you can't switch to something else, just go to another project either from your company or personal, open source, e.t.c...

Killing Time

Sometimes you are in places where you have everything you need to code and unfortunately you have to be there just waiting. A.K.A airports (most of the times).

If you are reading this you're quite lucky, coding at an airport is fun because you are still in mainland and you can get internet either from there or from your own, you can also charge your laptop, phones and whatever you need but most importantly, you can get some coffee and food, that's right, please grab something to eat before coding and get fully focused :)

Sometimes it is unfortunate and your flight can get delays. Lucky you, you had something to do so who cares, as long as the delay doesn't affect your final plans everything should be good, you just gained some productivity hours there.

Extra Focus

A clear example of extra focus is this, I wrote this in about an hour whilst travelling from Rhodes to Rotterdam in a 4h flight. Normally I can't write that fast and accurately because there are too many distractions.

I have found myself getting a lot of focus whilst I am killing time or offline, I can tell I am around %400 more productive compared to when I work from my home, and around %2000 compared to when I work on-site (I know right, working on-site sucks, I just go to say hi and hang out with colleagues a bit).

Maybe it is because you don't have distractions or maybe it is because you don't have anything else to do that you gain focus. Internet itself can distract you, you want to check social media, you want to check a song you remembered or you want to check how to be productive while travelling and coding, you see, so many distractions. I think one of the main focus reasons is not having internet.

Next to the not internet thing, when you are working online with your co-workers of course it can be very useful if you have to align tasks, coordinate things, help and unblock people but also becomes super distracting. Every time you get a message you lost some small focus, whilst if you are working offline you don't have that problem.

Photo of my biggest distraction when working from home:

Bad Internet Connection

Sometimes or maybe most of the times you need internet to accomplish your tasks, have a call with your co-workers or just copy and paste from Stack Overflow. But it turns out that the hotel you booked has an internet connection shared for 300 guests lol. That's why if you want to get a bit of a better connection, just check the ratings of the hotel before hand regarding to that topic, or even better just get your own hostpot.

In case the above is not possible, you can also go to co-working spaces. Not something I've done so much myself because I don't like to get that feeling of working on-site while working remotely but it is a good option.

Poor Calls

Sometimes because of the bad internet connection, your calls will suck. You are in the middle of a standup and then it's your turn to give your update and you see all the faces frozen in the screen or they just say, "yo Mateo, we can't hear you (you poor, get a better hotel, we don't pay you enough or what)".

For this, you just have to be prepared before hand, if your team doesn't care that much about it then fine, but because normally they do and maybe you have multiple calls within the day, just try to get a better connection using the options mentioned in the bad internet connection section.

It is not nice to have poor calls, it can also be a bit unrespectful depending on which kind of call you have, so get that fixed.

Bad Desks

Oh yeah the most important one. Before you book a hotel, if you are going to be working from there for a couple of days please check that at least if has a desk and a normal chair. Once in Istanbul I was working in half a desk and sitting on the bed because there was no chair and I was there for 4 days. I managed but when I went back to the Netherlands I had a massive pain in my back which you should avoid at all costs if you are a developer.

Conclusion

Working while travelling is awesome, you get to know a lot of places you wouldn't go to if you were only using your holidays but at the same time you can also have the advantage of the extra focus as I described, which is I think beautiful when you want to accomplish something short-term.

Because all experiences are different, I would love to see my fellow traveller programmers commenting about this. Maybe you don't get that extra focus and maybe you hate to do it. In any case, thanks for reading my experience.

Below a photo working in one of my trips:

About me

You can find me on my social media as @mateoguzmana

DEV Community: Mateo Guzmán

LZ4 – C++ React Native bindings for an extremely fast compression algorithm

How Do I Code 8 Hours A Day In 2 Simple Steps

About me

Animated Balloons With React Native

Installing Dependencies

Adding Animation Using Fiesta

Customising Fiesta Balloons

Conclusion

Links

Travelling & Coding

Offline Work

Killing Time

Extra Focus

Bad Internet Connection

Poor Calls

Bad Desks

Conclusion

About me