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Absolutely, but this speaks to the paradox I think. Cross platform is an attractive choice, precisely when you don't have a such a person. For example, as a sol

Absolutely, but this speaks to the paradox I think. Cross platform is an attractive choice, precisely when you don't have a such a person. For example, as a solo developer with no native knowledge who wants to ship an app or a small startup hiring their first mobile developer. Being proficient in all of Web(JS, React), Android(Kotlin, Java, Gradle), and iOS(Swift, Objective-C, CocoaPods) is a pretty significant ask for a single person too. Personally, I check two of those boxes(iOS and Web), adding Android as well would be a bit much.

nicoburns 5y ago
Hmm... I don't necessarily think it needs to be a single person knowing everything. For example a team made up of you, someone else who knew android and web, and a bunch of people who only knew web would work really well I think. Those who were experts in the native platforms would be responsible for bringing the rest of the team up to speed (providing context, advice, pointing to learning resources, etc). As someone who came to a react-native project (as the lead) with a web and cordova background and no prior react-native or native platform experience, I've found that just knowing about the ios and android build systems and being able to add basic code to the AppDelegate (ios) and MainActivity (android) has been entirely sufficient for our needs. It would be different if we needed custom native modules (although I'm confident I could learn - I think learning something specific like that would be easier than trying to work out how to structure a whole native app), but then the react-native ecosystem is pretty broad these days. A lot of things are covered.
- _fat_santa 5y ago
  I’ve shipped a number of RN apps for my current and previous company. I guess I don’t know the extent of what some companies are doing with RN but every time I hear about having to dive deep into Native Modules for their app I always wonder what in the hell they are doing. The react native ecosystem is huge so you really have to have some domain knowledge to be good at it in my opinion. I’ve read articles where the author was in Native Module hell and I just thought “oh well they could have just used this great package”. I know that illustrates a major problem with RN, but its exactly the type of domain knowledge that will make of break your RN experience.
rhodysurf 5y ago
Yeah I agree. I used to try and be good at all three but dropped android and now just focus on web and iOS (for both day job and hobby stuff). Keeping up with android wasn’t fun for me anymore

nicoburns 5y ago

Hmm... I don't necessarily think it needs to be a single person knowing everything. For example a team made up of you, someone else who knew android and web, and a bunch of people who only knew web would work really well I think. Those who were experts in the native platforms would be responsible for bringing the rest of the team up to speed (providing context, advice, pointing to learning resources, etc). As someone who came to a react-native project (as the lead) with a web and cordova background and no prior react-native or native platform experience, I've found that just knowing about the ios and android build systems and being able to add basic code to the AppDelegate (ios) and MainActivity (android) has been entirely sufficient for our needs. It would be different if we needed custom native modules (although I'm confident I could learn - I think learning something specific like that would be easier than trying to work out how to structure a whole native app), but then the react-native ecosystem is pretty broad these days. A lot of things are covered.

_fat_santa 5y ago
I’ve shipped a number of RN apps for my current and previous company. I guess I don’t know the extent of what some companies are doing with RN but every time I hear about having to dive deep into Native Modules for their app I always wonder what in the hell they are doing. The react native ecosystem is huge so you really have to have some domain knowledge to be good at it in my opinion. I’ve read articles where the author was in Native Module hell and I just thought “oh well they could have just used this great package”. I know that illustrates a major problem with RN, but its exactly the type of domain knowledge that will make of break your RN experience.

rhodysurf 5y ago

Yeah I agree. I used to try and be good at all three but dropped android and now just focus on web and iOS (for both day job and hobby stuff). Keeping up with android wasn’t fun for me anymore