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As an iOS developer, I had to decide between investing more time in Swift or React-Native. I chose React-Native simply because I thought it will allow me to bro

As an iOS developer, I had to decide between investing more time in Swift or React-Native. I chose React-Native simply because I thought it will allow me to broaden my mobile development experience and maybe one day stretch to even the Android platform. Furthermore, it improved my javascript skills in general and allowed me to create React web apps as well. I think it is the right choice thus far. Anyone else have similar experiences?

scibbidy 10y ago
I've had a similar experience. I have had to spend time learning both, I think I am just paranoid about job security! Moving from Objective-C to Swift felt a lot more natural than moving to React Native, getting used to Javascript and the web development environment in general is quite daunting. What were your deciding factors when making your decision?
- huangc10 10y ago
  I think job security was one of my decisions too. Another important decision was the fact that I wanted to be able to use React for both web and mobile apps. Mastering JS was a big bonus. That being said, it's definitely a smart move to invest time in swift (I did play around with some swift libraries), as it does seem the industry "might" move towards some kind of hybrid obj-c and/or swift + React-native app. I've personally decided to invest more time in JS than Swift. Yes, the React syntax and JS in general also wasn't as easy for me to catch on vs. obj-c (I wrote a lot of C in my previous job). As you write more, you'll get use to it.
RubenSandwich 10y ago
As someone who was in your shoes last year as I made a job transition into a lead developer role at a new company. I picked React Native for a small project over Swift: https://studio.carnegiemuseums.org/out-loud-cdc979453ef0#.rh2rkrgsb https://studio.carnegiemuseums.org/out-loud-cdc979453ef0#.rh.... It was worth it. Not only because immutable render functions make view code extremely pleasurable to write, but also because it's mostly JS and JSX it allowed me to quickly spin up a web developer to work on this project with me. (About 2-3 weeks.) Now React Native is not without it's downsides though. You pretty much have to know the platform underneath if you want to do anything past API calls and rendering to a list view. (And even that list view does not support the heavy recycling that iOS manages for you.) For the above project I had to write our own Bluetooth, Audio and Accessibility Native Modules. But the speed at which we were able to develop over a native solution was worth it alone. I highly suggest looking into React Native if your next project is simple enough.
- huangc10 10y ago
  Can you share how big your team is and how many people were proficient in which languages? thanks!
  - RubenSandwich 10y ago
    Sure. This particular project was 2 engineers working about 4 months from concept to shipping. One engineer had done iOS development since iOS 5 and was familiar with Swift and Obj-C and only vaguely familiar with JS, React and Redux. The other engineer came from a web background using mostly Angular 1.x and jQuery with no native mobile development experience. Edit: 4 months because many novel solutions needed to be developed. Particularly a coarse indoor location that uses iBeacons and works without internet access and a statistics based learning audio player that alters content order based on what you have previously listened to.
    - huangc10 10y ago
      thanks! I can see these type of hybrid teams becoming more and more common.
- Eridrus 10y ago
  > I had to write our own Bluetooth, Audio and Accessibility Native Modules I hope you open sourced these :) I was looking at React Native the other day and the impression I got was that almost every piece that does more than display data from the web needed extra modules and far from all of them were written already.
  - RubenSandwich 10y ago
    Sure did: https://github.com/CMP-Studio/TheWarholOutLoud/blob/master/ios/CMSAudioManager.swift https://github.com/CMP-Studio/TheWarholOutLoud/blob/master/i.... See also CMSAccessibilityManager and CMSBeaconManager. They are not listed as packages on npm though because by the time we shipped the way to construct Native Modules had changed in the latest React Native. :/
htormey 10y ago
Yep. This describes me. I'm an iOS developer who has been contracting for the last 6 months doing nothing but React Native. I do hope to return to Swift once the language stabilizes a bit more. It was annoying not being able to easily use any third party swift libraries when Xcode 8/iOS 10 came out (Apple made some Swift language changes and all third party libraries had to update). All that being said, I'm pretty happy with React Native, its waaay better than any other cross platform solutions I have tried. It was interesting going to the React Native developer meet up in SF. Very few native developers were present, pretty much everyone in attendance was a web dev. I think being a native developer who is good at react native gives you a competitive advantage.
- menckenjr 10y ago
  Not surprised at the ratio. Wix, Web.Com and other "we'll build you a website for free" sites combined with offshore web devs have commoditized (in management's heads) a lot of web dev work, and they're looking to get in on mobile dev since it hasn't been commoditized yet.

scibbidy 10y ago

I've had a similar experience. I have had to spend time learning both, I think I am just paranoid about job security! Moving from Objective-C to Swift felt a lot more natural than moving to React Native, getting used to Javascript and the web development environment in general is quite daunting. What were your deciding factors when making your decision?

huangc10 10y ago
I think job security was one of my decisions too. Another important decision was the fact that I wanted to be able to use React for both web and mobile apps. Mastering JS was a big bonus. That being said, it's definitely a smart move to invest time in swift (I did play around with some swift libraries), as it does seem the industry "might" move towards some kind of hybrid obj-c and/or swift + React-native app. I've personally decided to invest more time in JS than Swift. Yes, the React syntax and JS in general also wasn't as easy for me to catch on vs. obj-c (I wrote a lot of C in my previous job). As you write more, you'll get use to it.

RubenSandwich 10y ago

As someone who was in your shoes last year as I made a job transition into a lead developer role at a new company. I picked React Native for a small project over Swift: https://studio.carnegiemuseums.org/out-loud-cdc979453ef0#.rh2rkrgsb https://studio.carnegiemuseums.org/out-loud-cdc979453ef0#.rh.... It was worth it. Not only because immutable render functions make view code extremely pleasurable to write, but also because it's mostly JS and JSX it allowed me to quickly spin up a web developer to work on this project with me. (About 2-3 weeks.) Now React Native is not without it's downsides though. You pretty much have to know the platform underneath if you want to do anything past API calls and rendering to a list view. (And even that list view does not support the heavy recycling that iOS manages for you.) For the above project I had to write our own Bluetooth, Audio and Accessibility Native Modules. But the speed at which we were able to develop over a native solution was worth it alone. I highly suggest looking into React Native if your next project is simple enough.

huangc10 10y ago
Can you share how big your team is and how many people were proficient in which languages? thanks!
- RubenSandwich 10y ago
  Sure. This particular project was 2 engineers working about 4 months from concept to shipping. One engineer had done iOS development since iOS 5 and was familiar with Swift and Obj-C and only vaguely familiar with JS, React and Redux. The other engineer came from a web background using mostly Angular 1.x and jQuery with no native mobile development experience. Edit: 4 months because many novel solutions needed to be developed. Particularly a coarse indoor location that uses iBeacons and works without internet access and a statistics based learning audio player that alters content order based on what you have previously listened to.
  - huangc10 10y ago
    thanks! I can see these type of hybrid teams becoming more and more common.
Eridrus 10y ago
> I had to write our own Bluetooth, Audio and Accessibility Native Modules I hope you open sourced these :) I was looking at React Native the other day and the impression I got was that almost every piece that does more than display data from the web needed extra modules and far from all of them were written already.
- RubenSandwich 10y ago
  Sure did: https://github.com/CMP-Studio/TheWarholOutLoud/blob/master/ios/CMSAudioManager.swift https://github.com/CMP-Studio/TheWarholOutLoud/blob/master/i.... See also CMSAccessibilityManager and CMSBeaconManager. They are not listed as packages on npm though because by the time we shipped the way to construct Native Modules had changed in the latest React Native. :/

htormey 10y ago

Yep. This describes me. I'm an iOS developer who has been contracting for the last 6 months doing nothing but React Native. I do hope to return to Swift once the language stabilizes a bit more. It was annoying not being able to easily use any third party swift libraries when Xcode 8/iOS 10 came out (Apple made some Swift language changes and all third party libraries had to update). All that being said, I'm pretty happy with React Native, its waaay better than any other cross platform solutions I have tried. It was interesting going to the React Native developer meet up in SF. Very few native developers were present, pretty much everyone in attendance was a web dev. I think being a native developer who is good at react native gives you a competitive advantage.

menckenjr 10y ago
Not surprised at the ratio. Wix, Web.Com and other "we'll build you a website for free" sites combined with offshore web devs have commoditized (in management's heads) a lot of web dev work, and they're looking to get in on mobile dev since it hasn't been commoditized yet.