mohamad08 (u/mohamad08)

mohamad08 commented on Show HN: HCB Mobile – financial app built by 17 y/o, processing $6M/month hackclub.com/fiscal-spons... · Posted by u/mohamad08

skylurk · 9 days ago

I am surprised you managed to get those entitlements at all!

Did it help to be a non-profit?

mohamad08 · 9 days ago

Tbh not at all, the process is tedious but pretty straightforward if you understand the requirements. Apple is did throw at me a huge checklist to finish which did take a while to complete, but after you successfully build the feature and submit test case videos to them its only a matter of time until you receive access to it. For Tap to Pay on iPhone, its very easy to achieve development status if you're just curious about the technology and its applications. Its more the production entitlement in which you must complete the specifications I mentioned before.

mohamad08 commented on Show HN: HCB Mobile – financial app built by 17 y/o, processing $6M/month hackclub.com/fiscal-spons... · Posted by u/mohamad08

rahimnathwani · 9 days ago

Wow that's great experience.

My son is 9yo and loves to make little animations in Scratch. He recently started to learn a bit of Python (just the syntax so far, no projects).

I wonder whether you can share anything about your journey, especially if you have any tips for the stage my son is at.

mohamad08 · 9 days ago

That's great to hear your son is starting at such a young age! From my personal experience I would recommend focusing more on the concepts (which Python helps with as the syntax is easy to navigate!). Project-based coding is my ideal way of learning as you build things you are truly proud of. I remember when I was young and made my very first Python turtle drawings. Once he turns 13, I highly recommend him join the Hack Club community. Hack Club is our parent organization and its dedicated mission is to help teenagers interested in coding. I believe I wouldn't be where I am today without it. It truly helped me become a better programmer and Hack Club even offers free prizes that help you learn even more such as a Raspberry Pi for those who submit their incredible projects :) Hope that helps! Always down to help if you have anymore questions

mohamad08 commented on Show HN: HCB Mobile – financial app built by 17 y/o, processing $6M/month hackclub.com/fiscal-spons... · Posted by u/mohamad08

mohamad08 · 9 days ago

My parents nor did any parent step in to help me on this application or the approval processes. Furthermore, the approvals didn't get "rammed through". It took me quite a bit to actually acquire their entitlements and app review approval. I dislike when people assume just because I live in "Silicon Valley" I automatically have everything handed to me. If you would like to learn more about how the processes that I took to achieve this feel free to ask!

mohamad08 commented on Show HN: HCB Mobile – financial app built by 17 y/o, processing $6M/month hackclub.com/fiscal-spons... · Posted by u/mohamad08

KenSF · 9 days ago

HCB is an amazing Rails 8 app. It is the Rails app that is processing $6M/month.

https://github.com/hackclub/hcb

Excellent work on the mobile app though I would wonder, since HCB runs on Hotwire, why it was not written as a Hotwire Native app which would leverage the existing Rails Hotwire app and not require a complete rewrite?

mohamad08 · 9 days ago

Hotwire Native tbh wouldn't have been a bad choice at all to use tbh. Especially if you wanna maintain 1:1 parity with the website. It combines both being a "web app" and native features we could still use like Tap to Pay and Push Provisioning. The downsides of it is that it isn't a cross platform framework like React so all changes would have to be pushed to both an iOS app repo and an Android app repo. Another downside is that it isn't a "write once run anywhere" type application as you're integrating Hotwire into the native code so you have to be comfortable with both Kotlin and Swift (however if you're writing native modules in React Native same applies).

Both are 2 completely valid and separate paths you could take when building an app and I'd actually be curious what'd HCB Mobile look like if we did use Hotwire Native.

mohamad08 commented on Show HN: HCB Mobile – financial app built by 17 y/o, processing $6M/month hackclub.com/fiscal-spons... · Posted by u/mohamad08

rahimnathwani · 9 days ago

This is great!

I'm curious whether you were able to build the app using backend APIs that were already built, or whether building this app created new requirements for those APIs?

mohamad08 · 9 days ago

Hi! Thank you so much for your kinds work :)

I actually did have to end up creating most of the backend APIs myself too or with the help of fellow engineers at HCB! What I like about HCB Mobile is that I'm not only creating a mobile app but also expanding our API infrastructure to allow for future integration with our platform.