I have the same experience trying to use it myself. And this stacked on top of the mess that the Javascript, Android and iOS worlds themselves already can be so

I have the same experience trying to use it myself. And this stacked on top of the mess that the Javascript, Android and iOS worlds themselves already can be sometimes. One of the apps I maintained got rewritten in React Native but I couldn't get it to build. One of the devs stepped in and helped it. "Oh just retry it a few times it'll work eventually" and sure it did. So apparently the experience never gets really good as opposed to native iOS development where once you get to a certain level you don't spend that much time chasing weird build errors.