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React Native at Instagram

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Re: React Native at Instagram

#81

Post by zcoyle »

ashark wrote: post #39
unsoundInput wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is actually not true. Afaik multiversioning of dependencies is not actually supported by build systems without manual effort (not counting major versions in non-conflicting namespaces). Problem is really more in fat libraries and "unnecessary" (getters, setters) and synthetic (e.g. access to private methods from inner classes) methods that are usually not optimized away, especially in debug builds.

I've definitely included a library and then seen (otherlibrary).(library you included) as an option in autocomplete, fairly often. Happens a lot with utility-level things like okhttp.

I've seen this with okhttp as well.

Re: React Native at Instagram

#82

Post by LeoNatan25 »

bennyg wrote: post #77
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have, and most of what is written there I find correct. Wouldn't go as far as the Flash stuff. Mostly, it's down to the terrible web ecosystem and JS. Feds love it, but they don't know better. Native developers do, and most of the ones I've worked with have suffered a mental toll on having to work with RN. Now, is it an understandable from a management standpoint? Sure, especially at a company like Facebook, where…

Feds? Dude, I've been developing on the iOS platform since 2011 and Android not much later than that. I've developed in Xamarin, and RN has a MUCH better development toolchain and dev experience. I really don't understand the JS hate. I'm using typescript for RN development and I have had 0 problems so far. JS/TS dev velocity is just so much better than ObjC/Java. Swift is a huge step in the right direction.

Do I really deserve the "dude" treatment?

Not sure how you developed with Xamarin, or how long ago, but it most definitely does not have worse toolchain development. Starting with a proper IDE, to compilation, to native-interop, to performance, to actual base library that exists.

As a side note, it seems http://subvertapps.com is down.

Re: React Native at Instagram

#83

Post by RubenSandwich »

huangc10 wrote: post #79
RubenSandwich wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who was in your shoes last year as I made a job transition into a lead developer role at a new company. I picked React Native for a small project over Swift: https://studio.carnegiemuseums.org/out-loud-cdc979453ef0#.rh... . It was worth it. Not only because immutable render functions make view code extremely pleasurable to write, but also because it's mostly JS and JSX it allowed me to quickly spin up a we…

Can you share how big your team is and how many people were proficient in which languages? thanks!

Sure. This particular project was 2 engineers working about 4 months from concept to shipping. One engineer had done iOS development since iOS 5 and was familiar with Swift and Obj-C and only vaguely familiar with JS, React and Redux. The other engineer came from a web background using mostly Angular 1.x and jQuery with no native mobile development experience.

Edit: 4 months because many novel solutions needed to be developed. Particularly a coarse indoor location that uses iBeacons and works without internet access and a statistics based learning audio player that alters content order based on what you have previously listened to.

Re: React Native at Instagram

#84

Post by ec109685 »

ClayFerguson wrote: post #68

The dirty little secret about React is that it tries to 'reinvent' the DOM tree, and Web Components will be out soon making it all obsolete. Why not just move to Web Components NOW, and not have to rewrite your view logic in 3 or 4 years. Polymer wins easily. React got a head start, sure, but the W3C standards and native browser support for WebComponents makes React redundant and unnecessary, in the very near future.

ReactNative doesn't even have the concept of a DOM, so how can that be its dirty secret?

Re: React Native at Instagram

#85

Post by huangc10 »

RubenSandwich wrote: post #83
huangc10 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share how big your team is and how many people were proficient in which languages? thanks!

Sure. This particular project was 2 engineers working about 4 months from concept to shipping. One engineer had done iOS development since iOS 5 and was familiar with Swift and Obj-C and only vaguely familiar with JS, React and Redux. The other engineer came from a web background using mostly Angular 1.x and jQuery with no native mobile development experience. Edit: 4 months because many novel solutions needed to be…

thanks! I can see these type of hybrid teams becoming more and more common.

Re: React Native at Instagram

#86

Post by owebmaster »

ergo14 wrote: post #60
codazoda wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm working on a project where we are recreating a native app using React Native. We've found similar results; about 90% of our code is shared between both platforms. We also build both platforms every time, so both apps match really well. I'm not sold on React yet but this is a major plus to the platform.

Any chance you also evaluated https://www.nativescript.org/ ? How those two compare?

NativeScript seems very imature for me, especially their promised integration with angular2. Compared to React Native, I really felt that it is not a competitor yet.

Re: React Native at Instagram

#87

Post by martin_bigio »

DenisM wrote: post #69

So I see they have a lot of code reuse between RN iOS and RN Android. How much, if any, code reuse can there be between React Native and React (proper)?

Great Q. React and React Native use difference "renderers". I believe that with the right pattern to use a different set of low level components you could manage to reuse a big chunk, but this isn't something we have tried so I'm not that sure.

Re: React Native at Instagram

#88

Post by martin_bigio »

losvedir wrote: post #50
martin_bigio wrote: post #4

@martinbigio here in case anyone has questions

Thanks for the post, very interesting! The post talks about the percentage of the code shared between iOS and Android. Is there any shared code with the web as well, or is that a completely separate react app?

Although the Instagram website is a React App we are not reusing any code atm. This is something I personally want to explore at some point though.

Re: React Native at Instagram

#89

Post by tedmiston »

htormey wrote: post #45
what2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a big plus for React Native. What are the negatives you have found?

I was at the SF React Native developers meet up the other night, the speaker (Devin Abbott) gave several nice pro/con's slide re react native. Here's a picture of the slides: http://imgur.com/a/T3O7i http://imgur.com/a/z2oIU

Great comparison. Slides transcribed:

-- Slide 1 --

Maybe we should use React Native:

- We know JS / React

- We have lots of web developers but few mobile

- Our design is brand-focused

- We're willing to invest in RN

- We want to get into OSS

- We want OTA code updates

Or maybe we shouldn't:

- We don't know JS / React

- We already have an iOS team and an Android team

- Our designs are heavily platform-specific

- We don't have the time or money for an RN team / OSS

-- Slide 2 --

Pros:

- Cross-platform

- Performant, native feel (with some effort)

- Great developer experience

- Push updates over-the-air

- Strong community

- Backed by Facebook

Cons:

- Early

- Unstable (bugs, APIs)

- Ecosystem not fully developed

- Polished apps are high effort

- You may need native code (so JS + Obj-C + Java)

Re: React Native at Instagram

#90

Post by Eridrus »

RubenSandwich wrote: post #74
huangc10 wrote: post #25

As an iOS developer, I had to decide between investing more time in Swift or React-Native. I chose React-Native simply because I thought it will allow me to broaden my mobile development experience and maybe one day stretch to even the Android platform. Furthermore, it improved my javascript skills in general and allowed me to create React web apps as well. I think it is the right choice thus far. Anyone else have si…

As someone who was in your shoes last year as I made a job transition into a lead developer role at a new company. I picked React Native for a small project over Swift: https://studio.carnegiemuseums.org/out-loud-cdc979453ef0#.rh... . It was worth it. Not only because immutable render functions make view code extremely pleasurable to write, but also because it's mostly JS and JSX it allowed me to quickly spin up a we…

> I had to write our own Bluetooth, Audio and Accessibility Native Modules

I hope you open sourced these :)

I was looking at React Native the other day and the impression I got was that almost every piece that does more than display data from the web needed extra modules and far from all of them were written already.

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