In Class 12, I decided I was going to build an Android app.
I downloaded Android Studio, spent an entire month fighting environment variables, Java configurations, and an emulator that refused to launch. Three YouTube tutorials deep, nothing worked. No app, no progress , just a growing suspicion that mobile development wasn't for me.
I closed Android Studio and moved to web dev, where things actually made sense.
That was two years ago.
A few weeks back, I finished Maximilian Schwarzmüller's React Native course on Udemy. Felt like finally settling an old debt.
React Native is essentially a peace treaty between web developers and mobile. The components change , no div, no p tag , but the logic stays familiar. View, Text, TouchableOpacity. Disorienting for two days, then it just clicks.
Navigation was the real shift. On the web it's invisible infrastructure , URLs and a back button. On mobile it's a deliberate design decision. Stack, Tab, Drawer , each one shapes how a user feels moving through your app. I'd never thought about navigation that way before.
And then there's native device integration. Camera, location, storage. A website lives in a browser tab. A mobile app lives on someone's phone, next to their alarm clock. That proximity changes what you're building. Small shift in thinking, significant one in practice.
A course like this is a foundation, not a finish line. I can start building independently now. I can't yet handle complex state management at scale, or performance optimization, or getting something onto the App Store. Real gaps , I'll close them by building things and breaking them.
The Class 12 version of me wanted to jump straight to the finished product. What I've learned slowly: the confusion isn't a detour. It's the road.
React Native is a genuinely good entry point for web developers. It doesn't ask you to throw away what you already know. That's what killed me back then , Android Studio was completely foreign. React Native lowers the barrier enough that you can actually start.
And starting, I've come to believe, is most of the work.