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I have a tiny marketplace start up and am building an iOS app for it. I know a strong dev who can build it in SWIFT + Firebase. BUT i am thinking (seeking feedb

I have a tiny marketplace start up and am building an iOS app for it. I know a strong dev who can build it in SWIFT + Firebase. BUT i am thinking (seeking feedback) if there are ANY advantages to using RN? I am not even considering flutter. I just want the app not to suffer from any performance issues. I am leaning towards shipping to app store ASAP. ( maybe 2-3 months)

_bxg1 8y ago
Well the obvious advantage of using React Native is portability to Android. The less-obvious advantage is partial portability to the web (would still take additional dev work, but some code could be shared) and the ability to hire JavaScript developers instead of Swift developers, of which there are lots more. But if it's definitely an iOS exclusive and you don't plan on scaling your dev team up massively in the future, then there's no reason not to just use Swift.
- adamqureshi 8y ago
  Thank you! Yeah for version 1 its iOS, most of my customers are on iphone. the other thing i need feedback on is, do i charge charge $1 to download the app or not? i do plan to charge to list your item for sale. Last i heard apple takes 22%? no way im gonna run ads on it.
  - _bxg1 8y ago
    Unfortunately I have no qualifications to give an opinion on that question
slow_donkey 8y ago
There's an article from Instagram/Airbnb about RN and how some screens weren't suitable because they were too heavy like the activity feed. As an aside, I haven't seen performance be a big factor in consumer apps. If you think of many popular products, they were kinda terrible in the beginning.
hjnilsson 8y ago
If you have as strong Swift dev, there is very little reason to pick React Native. You'll earn much more productivity using the knowledge the dev already has than trying to get people to learn something new. If you had a React based web app already, and a bunch of React devs, the case for React Native is obviously stronger. And would make more sense.
jacksmith21006 8y ago
Performance issues using Flutter? Not following? Flutter performance is excellent and it is still early days and will just get better. But dev productivity is where Flutter sets it appart.
bybjorn 8y ago
Why are you not even considering Flutter? Flutter has all the needed Firebase libraries and AFAIK better performance than RN (no bridge)
- _bxg1 8y ago
  Flutter isn't yet at a 1.0 release. It looks very cool and I'm excited about it personally, but compared to React and Swift it has less stability and far less tooling support and developer knowledge. There's also reason to believe that it could be abandoned by Google down the line: it's being developed by the Dart team, but it's inherently at odds with the Android team because it circumvents their API almost entirely. I'd do a personal project in it, but I wouldn't start a business on it right now.
  - bybjorn 8y ago
    Re; abandoned - yeah one never knows but Dart is a pretty integral part of Google these days with Adwords being built on it. Also I think that Google knows it will lose some developers to multi-platform solutions like this, so they might as well lose them to their own alternative (than say, react native). As for tooling support - what's missing? It has had hot reload since the start and there's the Flutter plugin for IntelliJ IDEA (can be used with the free Community Edition btw) which includes everything you expect from IDEA in addition to things like Flutter Inspector etc. https://flutter.io/inspector/ https://flutter.io/inspector/

_bxg1 8y ago

Well the obvious advantage of using React Native is portability to Android. The less-obvious advantage is partial portability to the web (would still take additional dev work, but some code could be shared) and the ability to hire JavaScript developers instead of Swift developers, of which there are lots more. But if it's definitely an iOS exclusive and you don't plan on scaling your dev team up massively in the future, then there's no reason not to just use Swift.

adamqureshi 8y ago
Thank you! Yeah for version 1 its iOS, most of my customers are on iphone. the other thing i need feedback on is, do i charge charge $1 to download the app or not? i do plan to charge to list your item for sale. Last i heard apple takes 22%? no way im gonna run ads on it.
- _bxg1 8y ago
  Unfortunately I have no qualifications to give an opinion on that question

slow_donkey 8y ago

There's an article from Instagram/Airbnb about RN and how some screens weren't suitable because they were too heavy like the activity feed. As an aside, I haven't seen performance be a big factor in consumer apps. If you think of many popular products, they were kinda terrible in the beginning.

hjnilsson 8y ago

If you have as strong Swift dev, there is very little reason to pick React Native. You'll earn much more productivity using the knowledge the dev already has than trying to get people to learn something new. If you had a React based web app already, and a bunch of React devs, the case for React Native is obviously stronger. And would make more sense.

jacksmith21006 8y ago

Performance issues using Flutter? Not following? Flutter performance is excellent and it is still early days and will just get better. But dev productivity is where Flutter sets it appart.

bybjorn 8y ago

Why are you not even considering Flutter? Flutter has all the needed Firebase libraries and AFAIK better performance than RN (no bridge)

_bxg1 8y ago
Flutter isn't yet at a 1.0 release. It looks very cool and I'm excited about it personally, but compared to React and Swift it has less stability and far less tooling support and developer knowledge. There's also reason to believe that it could be abandoned by Google down the line: it's being developed by the Dart team, but it's inherently at odds with the Android team because it circumvents their API almost entirely. I'd do a personal project in it, but I wouldn't start a business on it right now.
- bybjorn 8y ago
  Re; abandoned - yeah one never knows but Dart is a pretty integral part of Google these days with Adwords being built on it. Also I think that Google knows it will lose some developers to multi-platform solutions like this, so they might as well lose them to their own alternative (than say, react native). As for tooling support - what's missing? It has had hot reload since the start and there's the Flutter plugin for IntelliJ IDEA (can be used with the free Community Edition btw) which includes everything you expect from IDEA in addition to things like Flutter Inspector etc. https://flutter.io/inspector/ https://flutter.io/inspector/