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I wouldn’t call Swift (or Kotlin) antiquated. I’m sure it’s easier to hire JavaScript developers to hack on React Native because the talent pool is larger, but

I wouldn’t call Swift (or Kotlin) antiquated. I’m sure it’s easier to hire JavaScript developers to hack on React Native because the talent pool is larger, but I’d wager your app quality will suffer. Depending on the app, sometimes a first class user experience just isn’t a high priority, in which case native-focused developers aren’t going to be attracted to working on it.

dimmke 4y ago
>I’d wager your app quality will suffer. I really dislike this argument, and it comes up every time React Native is discussed. I think it's a holdover from Ionic style mobile applications that simply emulated native UI in a webview. It was awful - especially when the native UI changed and the Ionic apps didn't. It's likely you use RN apps every day and don't even notice because they're indistinguishable from native apps. React Native is designed to compile down to native code and it uses native UI frameworks. The documentation on how it does this is very thorough. The problem is not React Native in my opinion. It's the native UI frameworks for iOS and Android. These frameworks have a lot of issues and taming them often requires developers with a lot of time and experience in that specific domain. Which is stupid and wasteful. Here's a story from yesterday of how Apple's SwiftUI (their much vaunted successor to UIKit, a very flawed framework itself) is struggling to construct basic settings views in the new version of MacOS: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/08/15/ventura-system-settings-tonsky https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/08/15/ventura-system-... Not to mention the criticism of Swift as a language and how it has evolved, including the original creator leaving. And how complicated doing a fucking substring is: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39677330/how-does-string-substring-work-in-swift https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39677330/how-does-string... In my opinion, Flexbox is a perfect way of laying out elements on a 2D screen. It's way less confusing than the complex constraints system that UIKit used. React Native's implementation of it works well. Kotlin and Swift as DSLs do not need to exist. They are solutions in search of a problem. Designed by big tech to moat their platforms. Unless you're building an app that has a very non standard UI or a game, it doesn't make sense not to use React Native in my opinion.
- kuschku 4y ago
  Look at the new Discord app. It's significantly slower than previously ever since the switch to react native, and has significantly more hangups. React native works maybe fine if your target device is the highest end iPhone, but if your users are on Android One devices, it's not going to work nearly as well. That's aside from the layouting being obviously off compared to the native layout engines.
  - wiseowise 4y ago
    It works just fine if you actually profile and see what are the bottlenecks.
    - kuschku 4y ago
      I'd love to, sadly it doesn't appear to be open source ;) I can say from comparing pre-RN and post-RN apps side-by-side on a Nokia 6.2 it's definitely much slower (scrolling immediately drops frames, opening/closing the keyboard and other reflows e.g. multiwindow cause the app to hang for seconds).
- programmarchy 4y ago
  There’s always going to be a performance penalty for React Native applications because of the JavaScript bridge, and on iOS you’re giving up ARC memory management for your app logic. For basic stuff you can write it off, but doing anything cutting edge like AR, custom graphics drawing, custom text layout and input, etc. is off the table. Even picking up a new iOS feature (e.g. focus filters) is a pain because you need to maintain a layer of bridge code, or wait for a third party module to catch up. One somewhat direct comparison is Discord (RN) vs Telegram (Swift) on iOS. Discord has put a massive engineering effort into their app but switching channels still often feels glitchy and sluggish whereas Telegram’s layouts snap into place instantly. Telegram feels more solid, and it also properly wires up all the little iOS features like haptic feedback, pull to refresh, etc. whereas Discord mutes all of that and feels less lively. Regarding constraint-based layouts, they can actually be much simpler in many cases because they help you avoid deep layers of nesting. They also ensure consistency (leading and trailing margins, safe areas, etc.) Again, trade-offs that deal in performance and uniformity with the platform. For CRUD type apps, it probably doesn’t matter. But like I said those probably aren’t the types of apps native developers would be most interested in building.

dimmke 4y ago

>I’d wager your app quality will suffer. I really dislike this argument, and it comes up every time React Native is discussed. I think it's a holdover from Ionic style mobile applications that simply emulated native UI in a webview. It was awful - especially when the native UI changed and the Ionic apps didn't. It's likely you use RN apps every day and don't even notice because they're indistinguishable from native apps. React Native is designed to compile down to native code and it uses native UI frameworks. The documentation on how it does this is very thorough. The problem is not React Native in my opinion. It's the native UI frameworks for iOS and Android. These frameworks have a lot of issues and taming them often requires developers with a lot of time and experience in that specific domain. Which is stupid and wasteful. Here's a story from yesterday of how Apple's SwiftUI (their much vaunted successor to UIKit, a very flawed framework itself) is struggling to construct basic settings views in the new version of MacOS: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/08/15/ventura-system-settings-tonsky https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/08/15/ventura-system-... Not to mention the criticism of Swift as a language and how it has evolved, including the original creator leaving. And how complicated doing a fucking substring is: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39677330/how-does-string-substring-work-in-swift https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39677330/how-does-string... In my opinion, Flexbox is a perfect way of laying out elements on a 2D screen. It's way less confusing than the complex constraints system that UIKit used. React Native's implementation of it works well. Kotlin and Swift as DSLs do not need to exist. They are solutions in search of a problem. Designed by big tech to moat their platforms. Unless you're building an app that has a very non standard UI or a game, it doesn't make sense not to use React Native in my opinion.

kuschku 4y ago
Look at the new Discord app. It's significantly slower than previously ever since the switch to react native, and has significantly more hangups. React native works maybe fine if your target device is the highest end iPhone, but if your users are on Android One devices, it's not going to work nearly as well. That's aside from the layouting being obviously off compared to the native layout engines.
- wiseowise 4y ago
  It works just fine if you actually profile and see what are the bottlenecks.
  - kuschku 4y ago
    I'd love to, sadly it doesn't appear to be open source ;) I can say from comparing pre-RN and post-RN apps side-by-side on a Nokia 6.2 it's definitely much slower (scrolling immediately drops frames, opening/closing the keyboard and other reflows e.g. multiwindow cause the app to hang for seconds).
programmarchy 4y ago
There’s always going to be a performance penalty for React Native applications because of the JavaScript bridge, and on iOS you’re giving up ARC memory management for your app logic. For basic stuff you can write it off, but doing anything cutting edge like AR, custom graphics drawing, custom text layout and input, etc. is off the table. Even picking up a new iOS feature (e.g. focus filters) is a pain because you need to maintain a layer of bridge code, or wait for a third party module to catch up. One somewhat direct comparison is Discord (RN) vs Telegram (Swift) on iOS. Discord has put a massive engineering effort into their app but switching channels still often feels glitchy and sluggish whereas Telegram’s layouts snap into place instantly. Telegram feels more solid, and it also properly wires up all the little iOS features like haptic feedback, pull to refresh, etc. whereas Discord mutes all of that and feels less lively. Regarding constraint-based layouts, they can actually be much simpler in many cases because they help you avoid deep layers of nesting. They also ensure consistency (leading and trailing margins, safe areas, etc.) Again, trade-offs that deal in performance and uniformity with the platform. For CRUD type apps, it probably doesn’t matter. But like I said those probably aren’t the types of apps native developers would be most interested in building.