4 ms·

So you haven't used RN then?

by bennyg 10y ago

LeoNatan25 10y ago
I have, and most of what is written there I find correct. Wouldn't go as far as the Flash stuff. Mostly, it's down to the terrible web ecosystem and JS. Feds love it, but they don't know better. Native developers do, and most of the ones I've worked with have suffered a mental toll on having to work with RN. Now, is it an understandable from a management standpoint? Sure, especially at a company like Facebook, where there is a lot of fed experience. Does that make it a good technology? Not at all. It's a terrible compromise that has only one purpose - allow feds to develop on mobile. If only cross-platform mobile development was a concern, something like Xamarin is a lot more technologically sound, but still a big compromise.
- bennyg 10y ago
  Feds? Dude, I've been developing on the iOS platform since 2011 and Android not much later than that. I've developed in Xamarin, and RN has a MUCH better development toolchain and dev experience. I really don't understand the JS hate. I'm using typescript for RN development and I have had 0 problems so far. JS/TS dev velocity is just so much better than ObjC/Java. Swift is a huge step in the right direction.
  - LeoNatan25 10y ago
    Do I really deserve the "dude" treatment? Not sure how you developed with Xamarin, or how long ago, but it most definitely does not have worse toolchain development. Starting with a proper IDE, to compilation, to native-interop, to performance, to actual base library that exists. As a side note, it seems http://subvertapps.com http://subvertapps.com is down.
    - bennyg 10y ago
      Thanks for pointing that out, forgot my old site was still in the profile. What do you mean by feds? That's still a very confusing statement. Switched off of Xamarin about 8 months ago and haven't looked back. My organization had a ton of problems with Xamarin, without honestly that much gain at all. We still needed specific devs for Android and iOS. Sharing component and state code has been an absolute boon in productivity and speed in getting a world class suite of apps out. That plus a React stack for Web means I can help out on Web with no ramp up, and vice versa.
      - LeoNatan25 10y ago
        Let me explain the "fed" thing. React Native's number one "feature" is that web developers are able to join in development, or even start a "native" app where it would not have been possible before due to no native development teams. In the web dev world, "fed" /front end developer/ is usually the term for the front end web developers - this is what I meant. (While iOS and Android is also front end, it seems "fed" is almost exclusively used for front end web developers.) So, normally, anyone that has extensive (or even some) experience with web development, would already be familiar with the ecosystem and concepts, while for many native developers, there is quite the cultural shock from a bad ecosystem, no base library support, very uncomfortable debug tools and a flamboyant community behavior (many ridiculously terrible click-bait Medium articles a la "why I switched from [X] to [Y] and it is the best thing ever" and "How [Z] changed the way I write code and it will change the way software development is done"). I am not sure why you have had bad experience with Xamarin. To me, using .NET for shared business logic sounds like a real winner, but I will give you the fact that it helps with web dev. However, as a purely technological observation and no interest in management considerations, I can only argue against using RN at this stage.
        anamoulous 10y ago
        FWIW, I have worked in webdev for over a decade and have never seen front-end referred to casually as "fed".
        lenkite 10y ago
        So, a backend developer would be a 'bed'. I can see how that goes..
        bennyg 10y ago
        I think you're conflating a BS web dev culture (which is amplified extensively through the internet and feedback-loopy sites like HN) and actual development technologies. There's always articles like you're mentioning. I mean, go look at articles when Swift was first announced - or even iOS tutorials and forums ca. 2011. Sharing business logic is a good thing. But it's hardly the number one feature of react-native. We share almost everything, and have almost no problems doing so. It's been a very good thing for our org, while Xamarin was the opposite. It's also worth noting that we ramped everyone up from being C# front-end to React/React-Native front-end. So nobody really came in as cutting-edge web dev experts, but our developer velocity now is insane. I think React/RN are good things.
  - megablast 10y ago
    Sure, but I would use anything over Xamarin. So buggy, so many crashes, so little support, such slow apps. And I have tried MVVMCross and forms.

So you haven't used RN then?

by bennyg 10y ago

So you haven't used RN then?

I have, and most of what is written there I find correct. Wouldn't go as far as the Flash stuff. Mostly, it's down to the terrible web ecosystem and JS. Feds love it, but they don't know better. Native developers do, and most of the ones I've worked with have suffered a mental toll on having to work with RN. Now, is it an understandable from a management standpoint? Sure, especially at a company like Facebook, where there is a lot of fed experience. Does that make it a good technology? Not at all. It's a terrible compromise that has only one purpose - allow feds to develop on mobile. If only cross-platform mobile development was a concern, something like Xamarin is a lot more technologically sound, but still a big compromise.

bennyg 10y ago
Feds? Dude, I've been developing on the iOS platform since 2011 and Android not much later than that. I've developed in Xamarin, and RN has a MUCH better development toolchain and dev experience. I really don't understand the JS hate. I'm using typescript for RN development and I have had 0 problems so far. JS/TS dev velocity is just so much better than ObjC/Java. Swift is a huge step in the right direction.
- LeoNatan25 10y ago
  Do I really deserve the "dude" treatment? Not sure how you developed with Xamarin, or how long ago, but it most definitely does not have worse toolchain development. Starting with a proper IDE, to compilation, to native-interop, to performance, to actual base library that exists. As a side note, it seems http://subvertapps.com http://subvertapps.com is down.
  - bennyg 10y ago
    Thanks for pointing that out, forgot my old site was still in the profile. What do you mean by feds? That's still a very confusing statement. Switched off of Xamarin about 8 months ago and haven't looked back. My organization had a ton of problems with Xamarin, without honestly that much gain at all. We still needed specific devs for Android and iOS. Sharing component and state code has been an absolute boon in productivity and speed in getting a world class suite of apps out. That plus a React stack for Web means I can help out on Web with no ramp up, and vice versa.
    - LeoNatan25 10y ago
      Let me explain the "fed" thing. React Native's number one "feature" is that web developers are able to join in development, or even start a "native" app where it would not have been possible before due to no native development teams. In the web dev world, "fed" /front end developer/ is usually the term for the front end web developers - this is what I meant. (While iOS and Android is also front end, it seems "fed" is almost exclusively used for front end web developers.) So, normally, anyone that has extensive (or even some) experience with web development, would already be familiar with the ecosystem and concepts, while for many native developers, there is quite the cultural shock from a bad ecosystem, no base library support, very uncomfortable debug tools and a flamboyant community behavior (many ridiculously terrible click-bait Medium articles a la "why I switched from [X] to [Y] and it is the best thing ever" and "How [Z] changed the way I write code and it will change the way software development is done"). I am not sure why you have had bad experience with Xamarin. To me, using .NET for shared business logic sounds like a real winner, but I will give you the fact that it helps with web dev. However, as a purely technological observation and no interest in management considerations, I can only argue against using RN at this stage.
      - anamoulous 10y ago
        FWIW, I have worked in webdev for over a decade and have never seen front-end referred to casually as "fed".
      - lenkite 10y ago
        So, a backend developer would be a 'bed'. I can see how that goes..
      - bennyg 10y ago
        I think you're conflating a BS web dev culture (which is amplified extensively through the internet and feedback-loopy sites like HN) and actual development technologies. There's always articles like you're mentioning. I mean, go look at articles when Swift was first announced - or even iOS tutorials and forums ca. 2011. Sharing business logic is a good thing. But it's hardly the number one feature of react-native. We share almost everything, and have almost no problems doing so. It's been a very good thing for our org, while Xamarin was the opposite. It's also worth noting that we ramped everyone up from being C# front-end to React/React-Native front-end. So nobody really came in as cutting-edge web dev experts, but our developer velocity now is insane. I think React/RN are good things.
- megablast 10y ago
  Sure, but I would use anything over Xamarin. So buggy, so many crashes, so little support, such slow apps. And I have tried MVVMCross and forms.