đ¤ âWhy does learning mobile app development feel way harder than building for the web?â
Most beginners today jump into coding through web dev because it feels fast, visual, forgiving, and honestly⌠fun!
But the moment they try building Android apps, the vibe suddenly changes:
new languages, heavy setup, long builds, and tons of steps before even seeing a single button on screen.
It just felt like something is unnecessarily complicated.
Meanwhile, vibe-coding and AI tools have already opened the doors for normal people to build decent web apps - so we wondered:
âWait⌠what if making Android apps could be as simple as building a web app?
What if itâs not âhardâ, weâre just doing it the old way?â
And like any good maker-brain moment, we didnât think too much - we just tried building it.
đŹ Introducing Dolphin (Open Source, Beta)
A fun experimental side-project by me & Adhil Shan (https://www.linkedin.com/in/adhil-shan/)
Dolphin is our small attempt to let people build Android apps using React + Vite while still accessing native features.
Not claiming itâs perfect, not claiming itâs the future - just curious enough to try and ⌠it works. đ
Itâs open source, still Beta, and honestly thereâs a lot to figure out - but we thought it was cool enough to share now instead of âone day when itâs readyâ.
đ But⌠I didnât stop there
I am also working on a vibe-coding tool built on top of Dolphin so that anyone can build Android apps in a simple, straight-forward, âjust type what you wantâ kind of way.
More updates soon - this is just us having fun, building things we wish existed.
If you wanna try, break, laugh, test, or contribute - the repo link is down below, give it a starâ to show support.
GitHub Repo : https://github.com/adhilshan/dolphin
#Dolphin #OpenSource #SideProject #HackItTillItWorks #FunProjects #React #Vite #AndroidDev #React #Android
Top comments (1)
This is super cool!!! As someone who builds full-stack SaaS tools and experiments a lot with AI-assisted âvibe coding,â Dolphin feels like exactly the kind of project I wish existed earlier. The idea of shipping Android apps using React + Vite with that instant-feedback web-dev feeling is honestly a game-changer for beginners and fast-prototypers like me.
Iâm Mashraf Aiman, currently working on a few AI-powered apps and hackathon projects, and this could massively speed up my workflow. Love how you and Adhil just went for it instead of trying to make it âperfectâ first. Thatâs the same mindset I use in my own projects.
Starred the repo, excited to play with it and see where this goes!