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Ask HN: What popular apps were made exclusively with React Native or Flutter?

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Re: Ask HN: What popular apps were made exclusively with React Native or Flutter?

#31
post #23

Although production quality, Flutter is not even 1.0.0 so don't expect a lot of public applications yet.

RN is at 0.55-RC according to https://facebook.github.io/react-native/versions

For open source frameworks the versions do not seem to be much indication for their maturity.

Re: Ask HN: What popular apps were made exclusively with React Native or Flutter?

#34
post #31
post #23

Although production quality, Flutter is not even 1.0.0 so don't expect a lot of public applications yet.

RN is at 0.55-RC according to https://facebook.github.io/react-native/versions For open source frameworks the versions do not seem to be much indication for their maturity.

(six months into a react-native project)

RN isn't production-ready/stable yet either. They're about to do a major overhaul of the internals because of fundamental flaws that have been surfaced by the community. While it's possible to use RN in production, "stable" is a laugh... there are monthly releases and almost all of them have some kind of breaking changes, so pacing RN releases is a huge fucking hassle. For example, in the release that comes out this month (currently in RC), they changed the Native Module API so if you have any native code that exposes a JS API (and who doesn't?) you have to refactor a bunch of code. And because it's JS, the only way you get compiler errors is if you're using Flow.

Re: Ask HN: What popular apps were made exclusively with React Native or Flutter?

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gyroscope is one of those apps that's extremely aesthetically pleasing, but I'm always reluctant to use as an example of React Native. Mainly because none of the interactions feel "right". It's always reminded me of those highly polished Flash websites that look amazing, but something always seems off when you use them. From the screenshots Bitesnap looks nice, but I can't seem to download it in the UK.

curious what you mean by not feeling right or seeming off? Those are very vague reasons. I'm not a user of this app, nor a developer.

To be honest, it's a vague feeling. Similar to the uncanny valley of special effects in movies.

There's a lot of UI elements that have the appearance of (heavily-stylised) native ones, but not the behaviour. You can't swipe back on screen transitions, tapping the selected tab icon doesn't scroll the screen to top, everything feels almost imperceptibly sluggish. Lots of little things like these.

Re: Ask HN: What popular apps were made exclusively with React Native or Flutter?

#37
My game Falcross is written entirely in RN, and I believe it is the biggest production game on either store that's full RN:

[App Store]: https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/falcross-logic-puzzles/id500...

[Google Play]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rawrmaan.f...

Re: Ask HN: What popular apps were made exclusively with React Native or Flutter?

#38
post #7

Slightly off-topic, but it's super interesting to see Flutter (which seems to be by Google), use Visual Studio Code (by Microsoft) and an iPhone X simulator (by Apple) as their main demo. I guess it gets the point across.

I'm actually really happy they've invested in a vscode plugin. The Android story of being forced to use Android Studio was not fun, even considering how good Intellij is

Re: Ask HN: What popular apps were made exclusively with React Native or Flutter?

#39

I have a tiny marketplace start up and am building an iOS app for it. I know a strong dev who can build it in SWIFT + Firebase. BUT i am thinking (seeking feedback) if there are ANY advantages to using RN? I am not even considering flutter. I just want the app not to suffer from any performance issues. I am leaning towards shipping to app store ASAP. ( maybe 2-3 months)

There's an article from Instagram/Airbnb about RN and how some screens weren't suitable because they were too heavy like the activity feed.

As an aside, I haven't seen performance be a big factor in consumer apps. If you think of many popular products, they were kinda terrible in the beginning.

Re: Ask HN: What popular apps were made exclusively with React Native or Flutter?

#40

I have a tiny marketplace start up and am building an iOS app for it. I know a strong dev who can build it in SWIFT + Firebase. BUT i am thinking (seeking feedback) if there are ANY advantages to using RN? I am not even considering flutter. I just want the app not to suffer from any performance issues. I am leaning towards shipping to app store ASAP. ( maybe 2-3 months)

If you have as strong Swift dev, there is very little reason to pick React Native. You'll earn much more productivity using the knowledge the dev already has than trying to get people to learn something new.

If you had a React based web app already, and a bunch of React devs, the case for React Native is obviously stronger. And would make more sense.

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