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I dare to say 99% of the time I can spot a non-native app within seconds of using it. RN & co. are fantastic for quick MVP. For serious product it might be actu

I dare to say 99% of the time I can spot a non-native app within seconds of using it. RN & co. are fantastic for quick MVP. For serious product it might be actually faster to build native for both platforms. You will start hitting the limitations of RN very soon, even in core functionalities like navigation.

krly 5y ago
Yep. Building native for both platforms is becoming easier and easier with MVVM, SwiftUI, and Jetpack Compose.
- MrDresden 5y ago
  After 10+ years of Android development I honestly feel like I am cheating when writing UI code using Compose these days. Also do Dart/Flutter development along side it and.... they (D/F) just feel so damn verbose and messy by comparison. edit: I can also mirror what the author of the article mentions. Any update in OS versions or the Flutter framework can seriously cripple some of the packages that you'll need to use in order to make a functioning application. Massive time will be spent hunting down the weirdest issues. But to be fair, that can also happen on the native side. They are usually just much easier to find and fix.
_fat_santa 5y ago
Yet a shocking number of apps from major companies are all built in this manner. I think the reason it's so damn popular is RN & co. get "close enough" to where many companies can get away with having an cross platform app, especially for React Native apps once you dial everything in and get used to the quirks compared to Native.
- josefrichter 5y ago
  True. It’s inexcusable for large global corporations, to be fair. Typical culprits include banks and airlines - those are some of the most awful apps around.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
whiplashoo 5y ago
Even if you can spot a non-native app in seconds, does it really matter? The vast majority of users simply won't notice and not care at all if it's native or built with Flutter, Xamarin, RN, etc. The same has been said for Electron on desktop for years, but look at how VS Code is probably the top editor in use on desktop platforms, and even more demanding audience, like developers, don't really care that it's non-native.
- akmarinov 5y ago
  It does matter, I skip using a lot of airline apps and some bank apps, because of the horrible experience they provide. It’s easier to do it via their website.
  - kjaftaedi 5y ago
    You're equating horrible experience with cross platform architectures, whereas there are any number of reasons apps can be bad. It is perfectly possible to build a poor app in any language.
    - josefrichter 5y ago
      Well that’s the point. While it’s perfectly possible to build a poor app in any language, it’s almost impossible to build excellent app in cross-platform framework. The reason why you recognize them almost immediately is that there are some people obvious annoying details - scroll lag, non-standard UI elements, non-standard navigation patterns, you can just immediately feel something is wrong, even if you are a normie. It can be partially compensated by the app having some other great benefits.
      - fauigerzigerk 5y ago
        I disagree about scroll lag. There are plenty of WebView apps (and websites obviously) that have zero scrolling issues. Non-standard UI elements is something I don't personally care about. Some people do, but I think this is an issue that is often overstated (or perhaps rather overestimated as a factor) by platform enthusiasts. What does matter a great deal to me though is launch speed and battery usage. Mobile apps are often used for short periods of time. They must launch instantly. And battery is the scarcest resource in mobile computing. Nobody will voluntarily use an app that is slow to launch and shows up at the top of the battery usage table in spite of only having been in use for a few minutes. As a developer, these are the issues I would like to learn more about in respect of any new cross-platform technologies.
udbhavs 5y ago
For web apps it's quite noticeable (mainly the lack of animations for routing between views), but what are some giveaways for React Native?
- josefrichter 5y ago
  non-standard UI elements are quite visible - modals, progress indicators, tabs also everything around navigation is trouble - ios has those large headers that shrink down once you start scrolling. For a long time this was not possible in RN, not sure it finally is. iOS 15 also uses modals quite a lot more than previous versions. Including modals on top of modals. Also impossible in RN up until recently, don't know current status. While the navigation-related differences might not be consciously picked up by normal users, it may be subconsciously felt - the app doesn't feel right and user doesn't know why.
rvz 5y ago
> For serious product it might be actually faster to build native for both platforms. So Clubhouse 'succeeded' on native this then before every single competitor copied them to the point where everyone has abandoned it? At what cost? It didn't stop Discord from copying them (which that is in React Native). It also seems that Discord is the prime example that proved how slow Clubhouse was to catch up in the first place without an Android app available at the time for their entire product. As soon as the Clubhouse Android app released, it was already too late.
- josefrichter 5y ago
  I don’t think Clubhouse’s fall has anything to do with the tech.
  - rvz 5y ago
    It is one of the many reasons why the hype died. [0] Ultimately they could not move quick enough against the competition. The expectation with apps these days is to release on both platforms from day 1 and Clubhouse was still too busy writing their Android app a year after releasing their iOS app, meaning they were too slow to compete against everyone else. As soon as that was finished with the invite system removed, everyone already left for Twitter Spaces or Discord Stages. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25883580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25883580
    - josefrichter 5y ago
      Honestly, I think the novelty just wore off. I doubt that Clubhouse users moved to other platforms, I think they just mostly stopped using the chatrooms. After some exploration phase, it seems the main use case settled to just semi-interactive podcasting. Which is something that Twitter did take over. But my guess is this is just some 5% of the initial traffic and even Twitter could live without that probably.

krly 5y ago

Yep. Building native for both platforms is becoming easier and easier with MVVM, SwiftUI, and Jetpack Compose.

MrDresden 5y ago
After 10+ years of Android development I honestly feel like I am cheating when writing UI code using Compose these days. Also do Dart/Flutter development along side it and.... they (D/F) just feel so damn verbose and messy by comparison. edit: I can also mirror what the author of the article mentions. Any update in OS versions or the Flutter framework can seriously cripple some of the packages that you'll need to use in order to make a functioning application. Massive time will be spent hunting down the weirdest issues. But to be fair, that can also happen on the native side. They are usually just much easier to find and fix.

_fat_santa 5y ago

Yet a shocking number of apps from major companies are all built in this manner. I think the reason it's so damn popular is RN & co. get "close enough" to where many companies can get away with having an cross platform app, especially for React Native apps once you dial everything in and get used to the quirks compared to Native.

josefrichter 5y ago
True. It’s inexcusable for large global corporations, to be fair. Typical culprits include banks and airlines - those are some of the most awful apps around.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

whiplashoo 5y ago

Even if you can spot a non-native app in seconds, does it really matter? The vast majority of users simply won't notice and not care at all if it's native or built with Flutter, Xamarin, RN, etc. The same has been said for Electron on desktop for years, but look at how VS Code is probably the top editor in use on desktop platforms, and even more demanding audience, like developers, don't really care that it's non-native.

akmarinov 5y ago
It does matter, I skip using a lot of airline apps and some bank apps, because of the horrible experience they provide. It’s easier to do it via their website.
- kjaftaedi 5y ago
  You're equating horrible experience with cross platform architectures, whereas there are any number of reasons apps can be bad. It is perfectly possible to build a poor app in any language.
  - josefrichter 5y ago
    Well that’s the point. While it’s perfectly possible to build a poor app in any language, it’s almost impossible to build excellent app in cross-platform framework. The reason why you recognize them almost immediately is that there are some people obvious annoying details - scroll lag, non-standard UI elements, non-standard navigation patterns, you can just immediately feel something is wrong, even if you are a normie. It can be partially compensated by the app having some other great benefits.
    - fauigerzigerk 5y ago
      I disagree about scroll lag. There are plenty of WebView apps (and websites obviously) that have zero scrolling issues. Non-standard UI elements is something I don't personally care about. Some people do, but I think this is an issue that is often overstated (or perhaps rather overestimated as a factor) by platform enthusiasts. What does matter a great deal to me though is launch speed and battery usage. Mobile apps are often used for short periods of time. They must launch instantly. And battery is the scarcest resource in mobile computing. Nobody will voluntarily use an app that is slow to launch and shows up at the top of the battery usage table in spite of only having been in use for a few minutes. As a developer, these are the issues I would like to learn more about in respect of any new cross-platform technologies.

udbhavs 5y ago

For web apps it's quite noticeable (mainly the lack of animations for routing between views), but what are some giveaways for React Native?

josefrichter 5y ago
non-standard UI elements are quite visible - modals, progress indicators, tabs also everything around navigation is trouble - ios has those large headers that shrink down once you start scrolling. For a long time this was not possible in RN, not sure it finally is. iOS 15 also uses modals quite a lot more than previous versions. Including modals on top of modals. Also impossible in RN up until recently, don't know current status. While the navigation-related differences might not be consciously picked up by normal users, it may be subconsciously felt - the app doesn't feel right and user doesn't know why.

rvz 5y ago

> For serious product it might be actually faster to build native for both platforms. So Clubhouse 'succeeded' on native this then before every single competitor copied them to the point where everyone has abandoned it? At what cost? It didn't stop Discord from copying them (which that is in React Native). It also seems that Discord is the prime example that proved how slow Clubhouse was to catch up in the first place without an Android app available at the time for their entire product. As soon as the Clubhouse Android app released, it was already too late.

josefrichter 5y ago
I don’t think Clubhouse’s fall has anything to do with the tech.
- rvz 5y ago
  It is one of the many reasons why the hype died. [0] Ultimately they could not move quick enough against the competition. The expectation with apps these days is to release on both platforms from day 1 and Clubhouse was still too busy writing their Android app a year after releasing their iOS app, meaning they were too slow to compete against everyone else. As soon as that was finished with the invite system removed, everyone already left for Twitter Spaces or Discord Stages. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25883580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25883580
  - josefrichter 5y ago
    Honestly, I think the novelty just wore off. I doubt that Clubhouse users moved to other platforms, I think they just mostly stopped using the chatrooms. After some exploration phase, it seems the main use case settled to just semi-interactive podcasting. Which is something that Twitter did take over. But my guess is this is just some 5% of the initial traffic and even Twitter could live without that probably.