Notes
Writing
Things I worked out while building — React Native performance, pagination, image loading — plus the occasional note from away from the screen.
Image Loading at Scale: Progressive Loading, Caching & Placeholder Strategies
A practical guide to image loading in React Native — skeleton vs shimmer placeholders, progressive loading techniques, prefetching strategies, and how to avoid the memory and performance traps that only appear at scale.
Vertical FlatList Inside ScrollView — Why It Breaks and How to Fix It
Why nesting a vertical FlatList inside a ScrollView breaks rendering and scroll behaviour, what is actually happening under the hood, and the correct architectural patterns to replace it.
Optimizing Re-renders in React Native: React.memo, useCallback, useMemo — When They Actually Help
The real guide to React.memo, useCallback, and useMemo in React Native — what they actually do, where developers misuse them, how to measure whether they are helping, and why premature optimization often makes performance worse.
Infinite Scroll Done Right: Offset vs Cursor Pagination (With Backend Support)
Why offset pagination silently breaks at scale, how cursor-based pagination fixes it, and how to implement both the frontend infinite scroll and the backend API correctly in React Native and Node.js.
Why FlatList Slows Down With 5000 Items (And How to Fix It)
A deep dive into why React Native's FlatList struggles at scale, what's actually happening under the hood, and the exact techniques to fix it.