Startups Using React Native in Boston

At Bevi the software team is structured to have shared responsibility over all the code. Each team member works on many parts of our stack including Web Ui (React), Mobile Applications (Android), Firmware (Arduino), and Backend (Java 8). We got weekly sprints and do code reviews using git on bitbucket.

Android – The Bevi smart water coolers have an android tablet that is the main interaction point with our end users. We update and push our apps regularly and we create seasonal animations that our customers love. The android tablet also functions as an IoT device that relays all events to our backend. We often have to dig deep in the android OS to ensure the uptime of our machines.

InfluxDB – A time series database that we use to store the history of all our machines and all service data. We store our data as events in an append-only way.

Java8 with dropwizard and guava – Used to handle streams of data coming from the machines and create derived streams to compute the status of consumables and flag any abnormal behavior. The data is continuously used to optimize the working of the Bevi and the user experience. We go pretty far in using a functional programming style in java.

MySQL – We use MySQL for a principal data store, mainly because we inherited that from the MVP, but we don’t have many complaints about it. We’re starting to use ElasticSearch as a data warehouse for OLAP and to optimize heavy queries. It’s REST-first design works nicely for us, and the speed is unbeatable.

Play Framework – We use Play / Scala for the heart of our platform: the API. We don’t serve any pages out of play, but it works nicely to provide a REST API. Scala takes a bit of learning, but it provides OO hooks to ease you into functional programming.

Backbone.js – Most of our web app is based on Backbone, for better or worse. It was the right decision four years ago when we started using it, and holds up fairly well. It’s stable, but being so event driven can make it hard to reason about.

React.js – Newer parts of our app are being built in React, which we’re very optimistic about. We’re hoping to take advantage of code re-use by repackaging with React Native for mobile app use.

Amazon Web Services – We run everything on AWS, which makes life easy, if sometimes expensive. We’re trying to avoid vendor lock-in by steering clear of their branded products as much as makes sense, and instead using plain old computer resources. Jenkins runs our continuous integration, which is a hugely important part of our process. As an agile shop we want to de-dramatize releases; CI makes this process so easy that it’s possible to release without worrying.

Java – We use java for our core backend and middleware needs. We use it for data mining large volumes of player tracking data and for an in memory business intelligence engine.

MySQL and PostgreSQL – We use both relational DB’s in various products. They’re used in fairly similar and traditional ways. We’ve let teams pick the DB they’re more comfortable with for each app. We’ve used PostgreSQL mostly for storing user data and MySQL mostly for persisting our analytics warehouse.

NodeJS – We use Express/NodeJS for our front end web servers. This allows us to take advantage of sharing clientside and serverside code.

Polymer – We use Polymer and Web Components to help modularize our UI. This is relatively new for us, with the goal of increasing maintainability, reusability, and reduced development time.

React Native – We use react currently for iOS development. We chose React so that when we also create an android app that will be quick and still feel native on each mobile plaform.