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Ask HN: Companies who adopted React Native over a year ago, do you regret it?

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Re: Ask HN: Companies who adopted React Native over a year ago, do you regret it?

#141
post #3

I'd love to know this as well, as we're currently evaluating making the leap between RN and Xamarin for our startup. (ideal world, I favor just using the native stacks for iOS and Android but we are short staffed)

I found Xamarin development to be about 30% faster on average, than native. But, even with Xamarin Forms, one often needs to customize the UI and code to target android or iOS specific features. And that is when it's a pita, b/c now you need to know native and the Xamarin platform. And it's all on you to figure out.. b/c the community and resources available are much smaller than the native community.

Even with the 30% development savings, I prefer native. It's just less hassle and more enjoyable.

Re: Ask HN: Companies who adopted React Native over a year ago, do you regret it?

#142
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it compare with react-native-navigation? Kind of difficult to parse the adoption/ecosystem based on download trends[1] for these two [1]: https://i.imgur.com/etEa7WT.png

I recently gave a talk at Chain React in Portland (first ever React Native only conference) where I compared these two nav stacks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFyaj5HmMEY&t=1059s The situation with navigation and React Native is a bit of a mess right now. Basically all navigation stacks can be broken down into two categories, those that are native (i.e built on top of the OS's existing navigation stack) and those…

I agree and even go one step further by saying that I'd never publish an RN app without native navigation.

Re: Ask HN: Companies who adopted React Native over a year ago, do you regret it?

#143
post #8

We switched to React Native for Bitesnap after developing the initial prototype using swift. We've been using it for almost a year now and have no regrets. It allowed us to ship our product to a much larger audience without slowing us down. Users seem pretty happy with the product as well, we've had no complaints about performance aside from a barcode scanning issue on older android devices. https://itunes.apple.com/…

Nice! I tapped that version number a few times and got the dev menu... gold!!!

Does seem like non native, but performs well ;)

Re: Ask HN: Companies who adopted React Native over a year ago, do you regret it?

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imho, I think you got it wrong here. I don't think you are supposed to make a production RN app out of the bat, by just using 3rd party dependencies. RN isn't wordpress where someone can employ you and say I want this and that and then you go off install 50 plugins and thats it, your project is completed. If you are installing a lot of RN 3rd party dependencies for a production environment then you are doing it wrong…

Cool I'll just roll my own Facebook and Stripe integrations then

it depends, on my app I don't use Stripe so can't speak for its sdk, but I do use FB. At start I was using react-native-fbsdk but found that it was very limited and when I submitted a PR and went through the NDA procedure with facebook etc, then they delayed putting my PR which was fixing an issue out. I decided it would be easier for myself to bridge facebook's sdk, and so I did which was helpful as I've added quite more features to it which the react-native-fbsdk isn't providing.

That said it always depends on your usage and if it fits your purpose, but I wouldn't rely on 3rd party devs to solve my issues.

Re: Ask HN: Companies who adopted React Native over a year ago, do you regret it?

#145

The team I'm a part of (~14 people) started building two new Android apps and transitioned our iOS apps to React Native a little over a year ago. Overall, I would call it a great success; we have four apps (2 iOS and 2 Android) built from the same codebase, soon to be 5, and React Native has allowed us to be incredibly nimble in developing the framework and features for them. Some things I do regret: 1. We didn't go…

I'm on the React Native team and focusing on testing. Can you elaborate on your experience with testing and what you'd like to see?

Re: Ask HN: Companies who adopted React Native over a year ago, do you regret it?

#146
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider Flutter ( https://flutter.io/ ) as well. The advantage over RN in terms of performances is interesting.

I remember putting the Flutter demo with a simple counter on a no-name Android device and having the Flutter app completely chug. The hardware had a really wimpy SoC, but a native app would never chug for something as simple as pressing a button to change a number. It made suspect that while in phones with strong GPUs the acceleration makes things buttery smooth, it doesn't graciously scale to poor GPUs (but someone…

Do you happen to remember what device that was? On my crappiest Android device (Moto E LTE 2015), the Flutter Gallery app runs fairly smooth.

Re: Ask HN: Companies who adopted React Native over a year ago, do you regret it?

#148
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK. Let's say that's completely true. Is snarkily telling someone they're not good enough helpful? Seems like a moment where you could share what you know (as someone, presumably, has been in the industry long enough) and help someone. (FWIW it sounds like a decent question to me: but then again undoubtedly I have not been in the industry long enough!)

I wasn’t meaning that at all. I meant that if you have to ask why people solve problems with over complicated solutions, you haven’t been doing this very long. The answer is: it’s in our nature to make simple things difficult. It shows more maturity if you just accept people do stupid things without trying to pry a rationale out of them IMO.

That is a reasonable opinion to have for sure, I think it just wasn't too obvious what you meant unfortunately!

Re: Ask HN: Companies who adopted React Native over a year ago, do you regret it?

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember putting the Flutter demo with a simple counter on a no-name Android device and having the Flutter app completely chug. The hardware had a really wimpy SoC, but a native app would never chug for something as simple as pressing a button to change a number. It made suspect that while in phones with strong GPUs the acceleration makes things buttery smooth, it doesn't graciously scale to poor GPUs (but someone…

Do you happen to remember what device that was? On my crappiest Android device (Moto E LTE 2015), the Flutter Gallery app runs fairly smooth.

It's not a "normal" device that I could really name, but it's internals are shared with several brands of no name Android tablets you'd find at Walmart, for example
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