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Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

engineering.shopify.com

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Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#6

Post by hota_mazi »

And in a couple of years, "Why we are moving away from React Native at Shopify".

Not slamming React Native but the sensationalistic headline. Anyone with a bit of experience in software should know better than making this kind of silly proclamation about the future of your software stack.

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#7

Post by newfeatureok »

Honestly I think the future of mobile will just be... mobile websites.

What's missing until regular websites have parity with mobile apps in functionality?

- Accelerometer and all sensor support (some of these are already supported on various browsers on various OSes)

- Background support

- Bluetooth

- WiFi

- Better notifications

- etc.

Sure there will always be a need for native, but 99% of apps don't need any of that stuff, really. Though I suppose both Apple and Google have an inherent interest to gatekeep.

Looking at my own most used apps:

- Messenger

- Mail

- White Noise

- Teams

- Google Maps

Literally all of them could be implemented as responsive pages with acceptable performance. There are a small number of companies that don't bother with mobile apps, Craigslist being the most notable of them until a few months ago. Part of the issue though is that the app stores give you a lot of visibility and to get that visibility you need to be in the app store. Sure you can use a web view, but in some ways that's even worse than just a responsive website because now you have to deal with the abstraction of your site that is a WebView. Not to mention the temptation to try for "best of both worlds".

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#8

Post by mambodog »

Nextgrid wrote: post #5

Airbnb said the same back in the day. Guess what happened then? https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/sunsetting-react-nativ...

it's almost like different companies make different tradeoffs based on different organisational needs and priorities

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#9

Post by chrisan »

hota_mazi wrote: post #6

And in a couple of years, "Why we are moving away from React Native at Shopify". Not slamming React Native but the sensationalistic headline. Anyone with a bit of experience in software should know better than making this kind of silly proclamation about the future of your software stack.

Man first thing I thought of.

Seems like if you try to proclaim the future you end up eating your words

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#10

Post by secondo »

Arguably the biggest concern with React Native is that it is controlled by a single entity, Facebook, and that they are not one of the leading mobile platforms who from a business perspective have strong incentives to ensure the future of their respective app eco systems.

Facebook's incentives with React Native are somewhat unclear. This is a big, yet often unspoken, reason companies are vary of depending on React Native for their mobile stacks. With more large companies such as Microsoft, and now Shopify getting behind React Native those incentives will have to please a larger group and should become much more aligned with mobile developer communities at large - and not just Facebook's desires.

If Shopify manages to play an active role in the development of React Native and expand the project beyond the sole control of Facebook then React Native will become a much more viable option for companies who for political reasons have refrained from using the technology.

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