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React Native at Instagram

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Re: React Native at Instagram

#231

Post by LeoNatan25 »

realharo wrote: post #147
ryandrake wrote: post #99

Call me old-fashioned, but I thought the Android/iOS code sharing nut was cracked: Business logic in C or C++ and UI in Objective-C (iOS) and Java (Android + NDK). As a bonus, you could bolt a desktop UI on top of the C++ as well.

It's certainly possible, but comes with a large number of its own issues: - C++ is a way more complicated language with the manual memory management. C is way too low level for things like this. - Complicated builds if you need to use a bunch of C++ libraries as dependencies. - Much slower iteration. - Complicated debugging. - The need to either write (slow) or generate (constraining) the Java/ObjC bindings. Then the…

With modern C++ language features, the "complicated language with the manual memory management" a lot less obvious or necessary. Debugging is only complicated on Android, where NDK is pain in the ass for some reason, even after so many years of Google developing the toolchain.

Re: React Native at Instagram

#232

Post by realharo »

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #231
realharo wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's certainly possible, but comes with a large number of its own issues: - C++ is a way more complicated language with the manual memory management. C is way too low level for things like this. - Complicated builds if you need to use a bunch of C++ libraries as dependencies. - Much slower iteration. - Complicated debugging. - The need to either write (slow) or generate (constraining) the Java/ObjC bindings. Then the…

With modern C++ language features, the "complicated language with the manual memory management" a lot less obvious or necessary. Debugging is only complicated on Android, where NDK is pain in the ass for some reason, even after so many years of Google developing the toolchain.

>With modern C++ language features, the "complicated language with the manual memory management" a lot less obvious or necessary

Not completely though, you still have to think a lot more about ownership and object lifetimes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfmTagWcqoE), which is a lot better than manual new/delete, but still not as simple as just having a GC.

Plus you have to deal with lifetimes of objects proxied to Java code, where something in the Java code becomes the object's owner. Though you can use a bindings generator like djinni (https://github.com/dropbox/djinni) to handle this for you (with some tradeoffs).

>Debugging is only complicated on Android

It's gotten slightly better recently, but it still sucks.

With Swift it's not trivial either, it's not that easy to set breakpoints into C++ code, stack traces on crashes are often not helpful (so any unhandled C++ exception that you didn't catch and convert into a Swift error is hard to track down, etc.)

Re: React Native at Instagram

#233

Post by menckenjr »

htormey wrote: post #78
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…

Yep. This describes me. I'm an iOS developer who has been contracting for the last 6 months doing nothing but React Native. I do hope to return to Swift once the language stabilizes a bit more. It was annoying not being able to easily use any third party swift libraries when Xcode 8/iOS 10 came out (Apple made some Swift language changes and all third party libraries had to update). All that being said, I'm pretty ha…

Not surprised at the ratio. Wix, Web.Com and other "we'll build you a website for free" sites combined with offshore web devs have commoditized (in management's heads) a lot of web dev work, and they're looking to get in on mobile dev since it hasn't been commoditized yet.

Re: React Native at Instagram

#234

Post by a13n »

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #228
a13n wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially as chips get faster, teams can afford opting towards a better developer experience to move faster and retain happier engineers. It isn't only developer experience, also developer velocity. That was the whole motivation behind React Native in the first place.

From my experience, any native developers that work with React Native have a mental toll from having to adapt to what seems like unnatural technologies from the native side. Add on top of that the terrible web ecosystem, terrible JS base library (and, perhaps, the language itself), the lack of IDE (not code editors), the debugging experience, the packager performance, and it's just not a good experience for people wh…

Having done years of iOS and web development, React Native is a far better developer experience than Xcode.

Take it from a former UIKit author: https://twitter.com/andy_matuschak/status/560511204867575808

Re: React Native at Instagram

#235

Post by natecavanaugh »

reggieband wrote: post #202
intoverflow2 wrote: post #168

This is a bad sign to me, talks about how to optimise start up performance and optimise list views when the processors in our pockets are the fastest they've ever been. Do we really have to switch to developer centric development where devs have an easier life using JS at the expense of performance? Think the millions of users would prefer their devices to have better battery life, load faster and have less cruft jus…

> devs have an easier life using JS I think that is willfully missing the point. Creative work, especially UI-centric product development, requires significant iteration. Layouts change frequently, entire view hierarchies can be re-worked, sizes are tweaked obsessively. This isn't just about decreasing the burden of engineering (as if Obj-C/Swift/Java/etc. were so hard to master). This is about decreasing the time fr…

The only thing I can say for both of you are that you're both right. We need to optimize for the user and optimize for the people getting the improvements to the user as fast as possible. Anything else is just technical debt :)

Re: React Native at Instagram

#236

Post by cgarg »

martin_bigio wrote: post #35
spicyj wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be interested in https://github.com/facebook/react-native/commit/a3457486e39d... . It's likely not production-ready yet but hopefully will become really good soon.

Brace yourself, FlatList is coming :)

When can we expect this in production?

Re: React Native at Instagram

#237

Post by theklr »

htormey wrote: post #229
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you say that React Native is not just to make life easier for developers, but then go on a rant ... that proves how React Native makes life easier for developers? Otherwise, it is a very big compromise, in regards to UX and performance. UX is not native - it reimplements basic concepts from each OS on its own in JS, which is neither good for UX (it doesn't look or feel right), and performance suffers due to bridge…

"So you say that React Native is not just to make life easier for developers, but then go on a rant ... that proves how React Native makes life easier for developers?" I'm very sorry if my comment came across as a rant, that was not my intent. I actually never made the claim that React Native makes developers lives easier in that comment. My main point was that raw performance is not the only thing that matters to us…

Paper was never designed to be a Facebook replacement, but a PoC in engagement through UI using Facebook. The released a lot their findings and tools to the OS community as well (Tinder took their animation mechanics). Btw 1 billion DAU would have never agreed to that level of rethinking for the app.
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