Introduction

What is Create Expo Stack?

Unlike various starter templates, CES is not incredibly opinionated as to how you should start your project, save for a few axioms. It’s a CLI designed to simplify initialization of typesafe projects focused on rapid prototyping, with React Native and Expo.

The CLI options allow you to configure a typesafe project with your preferred choice of navigation, styling, and/or authentication. It also serves as a portal to the opinionated starter templates that we feel are worth considering.

CES Axioms

Iterate Quickly, At All Costs

Through testing, curiosity leads to conviction but testing requires focus. When you set out to test something, there’s two types of work: (1) setting up your test and (2) interpreting the feedback. In a world that is always trying to distract you with more of the former type of work, you need to obsessively strive towards the latter. This affords you focus and prioritization. As an example, CES will not implement anything that will cause project initialization to take more than 10 seconds, because it pulls focus from what you are trying to do.

You Are Not a Guinea Pig

Moving fast and operating on the bleeding edge often leads to unstable experiences, this is normal. However, it’s a betrayal of creator/end user trust to impose that unstable experience on people who have come to trust your tools. We will never do this to you. Any experience that we believe is experimental will be communicated as such, as opt in. You are human, not a guinea pig.

Type Safety Isn’t Optional

CES is built for rapid prototyping. We have spent an incredible amount of time modularizing key aspects of initializing a new project because we value moving fast. However, typesafety is an absolutely necessary crutch that contributes to both short and long term productivity. If you don’t agree, this is not the tool for you.