Why I'm Not a React Native Developer • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I'm Not a React Native Developer

#161

Post by cocktailpeanuts » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 6:27 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #143

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point was not about the details, but about the uncertain nature of an open source project driven by a company. The patent issue is just one of the "symptoms" of this problem. When someone open sources their technology and adds a set of detailed clauses that adds some restriction (doesn't matter if it's a "real" restriction or not), it means they couldn't go all out. It also means as a user, you do have reasons to…

> pretty sure it's either iOS or Android. it's web, android, iOS, and PC. That's 4 platforms, if you consider web and PC separate, and more if you consider windows and linux as separate. Crossplatform is more valuable than ever. But react-native may not be the answer.

The context of this entire thread was about mobile ecosystem. The concept of "cross platform" only holds when you're comparing two similar ones

Re: Why I'm Not a React Native Developer

#162

Post by ovao » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 6:29 AM UTC

matwood wrote: post #20

atoko wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is some sort of signaling, a la 'no true programmer uses javascript, because types!'.

We all use it, but 'no true programmer likes javascript.' :)

I quite like JavaScript for relatively light scripting tasks. In that role, I find it pretty well-suited.

For complex applications I'm as leery of it as anyone else.

Re: Why I'm Not a React Native Developer

#163

Post by lawrencegs » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 6:38 AM UTC

weixiyen wrote: post #75

Reasons why I am a React-Native developer: - It works, really well. - Iteration speed alone has helped us retain at an extremely high DAU/MAU ratio compared to years past. - Both my apps have near 5 star rating across the board, probably the highest rated in the Sports category since we released, and none of our users notice that it is a RN app, which is really surprising b/c RN on Android is not up to par with iOS.…

may I know the name of your app? would love to see an example of 5-star RN app :)

Re: Why I'm Not a React Native Developer

#164

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 6:52 AM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #125

macspoofing wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. 'Verbose' is correct. It's not bad code. It's a simple control flow.

Using a branch when you can just do an assignment is objectively bad code.

[deleted]

Re: Why I'm Not a React Native Developer

#165

Post by fstephany » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 6:56 AM UTC

gabemart wrote: post #156

krinchan wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh no. Your application can be completely shut down and push notifications will still arrive on the phone for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. Once the app is open, you load the new bits of the conversation. Stuff in the background would be like video/audio calls, playing music, actively monitoring motion/gps (MapMyRun/Ride/Swim/etc), and a few other things that escape me at the moment.

On android at least, if you need to play music, couldn't you do that in a background service written Java and then have a UI written in RN that connects to that service?

Yes.

Re: Why I'm Not a React Native Developer

#166

Post by colinramsay » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 6:56 AM UTC

krinchan wrote: post #121

Axsuul wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So like a messaging app?

Uh no. Your application can be completely shut down and push notifications will still arrive on the phone for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. Once the app is open, you load the new bits of the conversation. Stuff in the background would be like video/audio calls, playing music, actively monitoring motion/gps (MapMyRun/Ride/Swim/etc), and a few other things that escape me at the moment.

I have written an audio app in RN. I have no idea why you think it is not suitable for such use cases. I assume the OP was talking about games.

Re: Why I'm Not a React Native Developer

#167

Post by drinchev » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 6:57 AM UTC

I was hoping to read more about performance. React is a resource hog for complex state and no 'componentShouldUpdate' method defined.

I will be very happy to see an app in React Native, just to check if it is as responsive as Objective C or Swift.

Re: Why I'm Not a React Native Developer

#168

Post by JaRail » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 7:09 AM UTC

banku_brougham wrote: post #160

joshwcomeau wrote: post #22

Ughhh. It's fine if you prefer statically-typed languages to dynamically-typed ones, but that's a preference, not a reason to try and say that JS is objectively terrible. Same with switch fallthrough, same with error handling, same with half his issues with JS. There are some legitimate grievances tucked in there, but the author lost me by pretending that his preferences were universal.

OP is not complaining about dynamic type -- the examples appear to show where 'type' doesn't apply at all. The funniest/alarming example for me though was immutablility. The documentation exhorts the developer to take care not to make assignments to immutable objects. And there's your immutability: just don't change object and it will be immutable.

Alarming? Just use facebook's immutable types or a transpiled language (eg typescript) that has them built in. Unless you're meaning it's funny/alarming how the author was able to write so much without googling a solution..

Re: Why I'm Not a React Native Developer

#169

Post by ffjffsfr » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 7:17 AM UTC

STRML wrote: post #21

This is simply a list of things the author doesn't like about JS, very much of which is practically solved by Flow/TS and ESLint. He also makes some of the React examples quite a bit more complicated than they need to be. Declarative UI is very simple! Here's the same code, using both class and functional styles (whichever you prefer), in a much more succinct style (11 LOC vs 49): class Root extends Component { rende…

> This is simply a list of things the author doesn't like about JS, very much of which is practically solved by Flow/TS and ESLint.

One of shortcomings of language listed by author is precisely this: shortcomings in language are not fixed by fixing the language but by adding new community-supported library.

Re: Why I'm Not a React Native Developer

#170

Post by cm2187 » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 7:28 AM UTC

doozy wrote: post #44

I evaluated React Native for a project and decided to go with NativeScript instead for a number of reasons: 1. RN releases a new version every 2 weeks breaking my app every time. NS is a lot more conservative between releases. 2. I don't like mixing presentation and logic, RN encourages doing so, NS does not. 3. TypeScript is a first-class citizen in the NS environment, it is not in RN. 4. Angular 2 > React 5. NS cre…

On the tooling I presume it is impossible to get help with the html markup, since it is commingled with code? Like there is no way to start writing html in your js function and for the IDE to autocomplete a class name based on the CSS it knows will be loaded on a page. This is sort of coding in notepad. Or are there tools that see through the js and understand how the whole page will fit together?