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I wonder whether React Native was just a little too late to arrive. As someone with a majority JS background I could never quite get into Objective C (I never t
by untog 8y ago
I wonder whether React Native was just a little too late to arrive. As someone with a majority JS background I could never quite get into Objective C (I never tried that much to be fair, just hobbyist stuff) but took to Swift immediately. There were enough rough edges around RN when I played with it that I preferred simply working with Swift directly.
The one exception to this is cross-platform stuff. I wish Swift could compile to be used on Android easily, but alas.
- mattbierner 8y agoI started as an iOS obj-c developer but do web development stuff mostly these days. I found it extremely frustrating to go back to Xcode and swift. It’s not about being able to write in JavaScript (or Typescript); in my opinion react native offers a significantly better developer experience around debugging, dependency management, interface building, iteration speed, testing, and sharing code. Hot reloading, npm, and “flex” layouts alone made react native more than worth it for me. I am only writing simple apps—not even cross platform ones—so I can’t speak to the pain points from this article. But I do hope that Apple learns a thing or two from react native. Once you realize how much better iOS development could be, it’s very hard to go back to Apple’s current developer story.
- mncolinlee 8y agoThere's always Kotlin, which adds a lot of the niceties of Swift when writing Android code. Kotlin also works on iOS through AppCode and Kotlin/Native, but that integration is still very young. I can't promise you won't have platform issues along the way.