It all started with a Tweet:

My reaction to that was:

I was pretty sure...

I was pretty sure that anything React Native could do, NativeScript could do better, and I decided to prove it by opening a quick contest on the NativeScript Slack channel. The rules of the contest were simple:
"This repo contains code for a contest run by Jen Looper to create a newsreader mobile app. It should run cross-platform and the code should be as elegant as you can make it!"
This project is inspired by this tweet:

I built a basic BBC News reader using @reactnative , check it out on Github https://t.co/dTFWuh9cGv . #reactnativepic  https://t.co/LBHb7X9V2s
— Joel Trew (@Minispecs) March 15, 2016

Contest parameters:

• Create a news reader mobile app using NativeScript, using the RN solution above as a model
• Make the code as succinct and elegant as you can
• Make the interface as beautiful as you can
• Emulate and screenshot your solution cross-platform
• Blog about your solution (you could blog as a group), explaining how much BETTER this app is than the one above...
• Tell me about it when you're done (@jenlooper)
• WIN A PRIZE!”

As I had hoped, our talented and enthusiastic world-wide community of NativeScript practitioners jumped to the challenge. Over the weekend, they put together several spectacular entries for the contest that made me “Proud to be a NativeScripter”! I was joined in judging this contest by my colleagues TJ VanToll and Sebastian Witalec, both experienced NativeScript developers and advocates. 

Winner - Peter Staev

The winner of the contest is Peter Staev, a Bulgarian developer who build a beautiful, cross-platform app with video capability and a very clean codebase with impressive XML parsing. Here’s a screencapture of his entry: 

We were impressed by the performance of this app cross-platform and the use of the nativescript-video plugin. This plugin has some plist problems on iOS but works on Android, and Peter’s Readme gave good information on how to workaround the video issues so that we could run the app.

Honorable Mentions

Strong and heart-felt honorable mentions are due to Ben Elliot in England, Osei Fortune in Trinidad, and Houssem Yahiaoui in Algeria.

Ben Elliott

Ben Elliot wowed us with his “over-and-beyond” implementation of the challenge. He created a Feedly app that aggregates 60 newsfeeds and wrote of his experience in a Medium post. Epic, Ben! 

Osei Fortune

Osei’s entry included a particularly nice Android implementation:

Beautiful job, Osei!

Houssem Yahiaoui

Houssem likewise wrote a very nice Medium tutorial about his experience here and gets points for using the NativeScript UI plugin:

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Congratulations

 Congratulations to all our entrants, and thank you for joining in on Slack for this fun challenge. We’ll do another one soon! Missing out? Join us on Slack!