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I'm all for write-once-deploy-everywhere, but React Native is better suited for apps that could be easily written web-only. Maybe I don't get what's better abou

by copperx 10y ago

I'm all for write-once-deploy-everywhere, but React Native is better suited for apps that could be easily written web-only. Maybe I don't get what's better about React Native over a native app that is just a web view.

naiyt 10y ago
> Maybe I don't get what's better about React Native over a native app that is just a web view. It's better because React Native is actually rendering native components. Stuff like PhoneGap never feels or works quite right as a side effect of being rendered in a web view.
- wingerlang 10y ago
  I think his point is - why make a native app that just re-renders the data which you can just as well look at in a browser.
  - suprfnk 10y ago
    Next to the fact that something like push notifications require a native implementation, people like apps more. I'm currently working on a way to make our mobile-tailored website into an app, just because customers keep requesting a _real_ app instead of a webpage.
clay_to_n 10y ago
React Native apps are written in JavaScript, but the components you use are wrappers for actual native view components. So you get native performance (the views can be GPU-accelerated), and native styles. I've been working with Android for a couple years, and (while I like it) it has it's warts. The architectural patterns required to keep a medium-sized codebase understandable are simply not agreed upon. There are lots of ways to do things, and (as the article points out) even the basic activity + fragment API's are very complex. I just started playing with React Native, after having some React experience, and it's a breath of fresh air. It feels like cross-platform without obvious negatives, and the rare bonus of being able to wrap + use native components or libraries whenever you need to. You can even share most of your code (even view code for basic views) across IOS and Android. React has a super simple API. The tooling is younger, but is out of the box faster to develop with than Android. That said, I haven't built a large app in React or React Native, and maybe it bites developers at some scale. No idea how it deals with long-running services, multiple threads, bluetooth or other hardware APIs. But for now, I'm very optimistic.

by copperx 10y ago

naiyt 10y ago

> Maybe I don't get what's better about React Native over a native app that is just a web view. It's better because React Native is actually rendering native components. Stuff like PhoneGap never feels or works quite right as a side effect of being rendered in a web view.

wingerlang 10y ago
I think his point is - why make a native app that just re-renders the data which you can just as well look at in a browser.
- suprfnk 10y ago
  Next to the fact that something like push notifications require a native implementation, people like apps more. I'm currently working on a way to make our mobile-tailored website into an app, just because customers keep requesting a _real_ app instead of a webpage.

clay_to_n 10y ago

React Native apps are written in JavaScript, but the components you use are wrappers for actual native view components. So you get native performance (the views can be GPU-accelerated), and native styles. I've been working with Android for a couple years, and (while I like it) it has it's warts. The architectural patterns required to keep a medium-sized codebase understandable are simply not agreed upon. There are lots of ways to do things, and (as the article points out) even the basic activity + fragment API's are very complex. I just started playing with React Native, after having some React experience, and it's a breath of fresh air. It feels like cross-platform without obvious negatives, and the rare bonus of being able to wrap + use native components or libraries whenever you need to. You can even share most of your code (even view code for basic views) across IOS and Android. React has a super simple API. The tooling is younger, but is out of the box faster to develop with than Android. That said, I haven't built a large app in React or React Native, and maybe it bites developers at some scale. No idea how it deals with long-running services, multiple threads, bluetooth or other hardware APIs. But for now, I'm very optimistic.