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. It was the last item on the list I promised myself I would actually finish instead of collecting more courses, and it felt like settling an old debt at the same time.
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.