Fills the same niche as Cordova/PhoneGap or Xamarin. It's kinda the best of both. Intuitive dev process for web developers not needing to learn new paradigms. Fully native compilation for better performance than WebViews.
Are you sure they compile to native? IIUC they use JavaScriptCore on iOS, which currently doesn't JIT. Probably good enough to drive UI and you can implement performance hungry stuff in native code.
I have been to few hacks to India, I found similar drama held by judges here. Well, I don't go for winning a price, nowadays, hackathan is mainly conducted for hireathon, you need to work on specific domain that company is experienced in.
You wrote next best google algorithm for page ranking, accurate search results, you will be probably get ignored.
You will be asked what is the business value? Why people should buy from you. The funny thing is, hackathan is just a coding stuffs, not a VC pitch club.
After few hackathans, I decided to not to compete on the crowd on a similar idea, then I pick my own idea or some algorithm to try, get to the extend of it make it work.
Definitely not about spending 10 minutes on SQL Schema. It is all about maintenance. MongoDB is right use case, if you know what it will be there in Table.
The article is sort of weird, why Document, no sql, no schema DB to be a schema DB? One fundamental fact that you liked MongoDB in early days (first 5 years) because it was damn easy to handle anything you throw at, you learned to build the business around it. In 5 years, you learned enough, business model matured, not much changes in the data model. Now development progress is matured, you have got team to work on, your worries relies on consistency. You might want to back to SQL. Now you know what schema/table you need, string length, data type, constraint, relationship etc, because you learned that in 5 years time. You don't need to deal with new developers screwing the Document DB (like storing Object ID as string in few places)
Developers, who reads the article beware of reality, you can look back 5 years now, not looking forward 5 years ahead. Don't waste time in dealing with database columns and schemas, instead build the business faster, I found Mongo DB or any Document DB is good fit for agility.
1000's of business move to Document DB because it is schema-less.
While working on Document DB, you should be master in writing stand-alone scripts in Python/Perl/Ruby to run every-time you break the structure, or fix inconsistency.
Sun and my hunger are my best time tellers. What after sunset? my wife and daughter calls me every 15 minutes 'when are you coming home?'.
In fact, I need smart-watch/device if that helps me to show me the driving direction during the rush driving in Indian cities on two wheeler (motor bike) when going to new places.
You trade your present time for future return while working on side projects. You might have different outcomes, your side project would have got traction, you can move on with idea to startup. Or it may help you to find early invester or co-founder through that.
If everything else failed, side-project definitely helps to find a suitable technical job that fits your resume, because you spend a lot of hours on working on technology you liked. When you are not succeeding, don't forget to open source your work. That add credit, too.
Native apps rendering capacity is sub-micro seconds. Hoping for Appcelerator's dreaming Hyperloop that give us native JS capabilities.
I still plan to use ReactJs (web) within web-view.