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Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

engineering.shopify.com

151–160 of 588 posts

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

#151
post #82

I wonder if Shopify did their homework and looked at Flutter. Flutter seems to meet their objectives more than React Native does. And as an added bonus, Flutter is easier to reason about, has edit and continue, and is more performant. Perhaps the use of Dart instead of Javascript was a deal killer though?

They talk about looking at flutter in the article.

They use the word once to say “we did a deep dive”. It’s never mentioned again.

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

#152
post #130
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know last time I tried React Native and wanted to use some cool feature of iOS. I either had to write my own RN plugin in Swift/ObjC or wait for someone else to do it.

You say that like writing plugins is hard or undesirable.

That's what I don't understand when people criticize frameworks like React Native... "I didn't like that I had to build 15% of the app in native code, so I ditched RN and now have to write 100% of the app in native code, but twice and in two different languages"?

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

#153
post #111
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. They are very different systems. Flutter renders onto a "canvas" and has a completely custom implementation of "native-like" views for each platform. They need to reimplement everything about platform views from scratch. React Native lets the native OS render actual native views, but lays them out and controls their properties using Javascript. You get the native behaviours "for free", but you do someti…

Yes. The common denominator isn't as low as one might expect. I'd guess at least 90% of all apps could be easily done with React-Native.

Sure. But what if the entire world doesn’t want to learn JavaScript? What if you don’t already know HTML, CSS, and JS? RN makes ZERO sense at that point.

As a C developer, man, Flutter looks pretty damn logical!

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

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tricky question. They start as web apps since they're built with mostly web technologies, but then they're compiled as native apps with native components and they don't run in the browser. So, I'd lean towards "no" -- they're not web apps at runtime.

React Native apps do not use web technologies.

I guess we can agree to disagree -- I consider JavaScript a web technology.

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

#156

I don't understand why so many large companies use platform abstractions. At a certain size you're big enough to have an iOS team that develops natively in Swift/ObjC and an Android team developing natively in Kotlin or Java. Developing directly for the platform, with expertise in that platform, is a proven long term bet. Screwing around with platform abstractions seems much riskier. The situation is a lot different…

Headcount is the biggest expense in almost all companies. Larger companies also have larger and more complex apps, so while a small company may have a small iOS development team, large companies have massive iOS development teams. Massive team * number of platforms = serious money.

You also get into all kinds of platform and feature parity issues. "Why can't we do X on Android but only on iOS?", "Well because they're two different teams, with different PMs, developers and release schedules. And please don't ask about the web team, who are in ".

Using abstractions you can have one massive "core" team, and several smaller platform expert teams. On the face of it, it makes sense.

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

#157
Shopify should stick to making ecommerce sites and leave the mobile engineering evangelical space to those who's businesses are dependent on mobile and have the necessary experience.

In short, the future isn't React Native, unless you have a time machine that will allow you to go back and rewrite it.

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

#159

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.

I have not seen one good app for android that has been written in react native. Can anyone show me one that doesn't suck in performance?

Instagram.

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

#160
post #63
post #51

Curious to hear more about their deep dive into Native, Flutter and React Native as possible technology choices. Hopefully, React Native is not a nosedive ;)

Flutter and React-Native are different directions, I think. For higly customized UIs (think Ableton Live, Photoshop, Excel, etc.), I'd say use Flutter, because of the non-native rendering, it will look the same everywhere. Otherwise use React-Native.

In my experience Flutter is not any less productive than RN is, I'd prefer the former in every case now.
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