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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

#241

Post by Androider »

wvenable wrote: post #235
Androider wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Facebook app is like Microsoft Word. Everyone only uses 20%, but it's a different 20% for each. The app is a hojillion megabytes, and serves literally billions of users. There's features in there that addresses some specific niche in Africa for "only" 50 million users, that some sub-team of a sub-team is tasked with maintaining.

Microsoft doesn't use an abstraction to create Word for Mac OS. They have shared code, yes. But they are different products with different user interfaces to match their respective platforms. I'm not sure why mobile is so different that one needs a platform abstraction if you've already got a bazillion developers working on the product. Of course, Facebook does benefit by owning that abstraction making it exactly wha…

Microsoft has been building Word on Windows since the 80's, so it's never going to be re-written. I'm not that familiar with the Mac version of Word, but I find the Mac Excel version lacking compared to its Windows counterpart.

For Word and Excel for iOS and Android they use... React Native [1].

[1] https://blog.appfigures.com/microsoft-goes-all-in-on-react-n...

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

#242

Post by KaoruAoiShiho »

Androider wrote: post #158
KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #47

Can anyone from Shopify directly address the points brought up in the Airbnb posts.

Shopify CEO expressed his thoughts on the matter quite succinctly https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1222551057798090752

Cool, though I'd argue *too succinctly. Go into it please, for the sake of the community.

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

#243

Post by koheripbal »

divbzero wrote: post #184
newfeatureok wrote: post #7

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 th…

Ten years ago Facebook fought this battle and lost. [1] [2] [3] [1]: https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/using-ht... "Using HTML5 Today" [2]: https://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/11/facebook_admits_h... "Facebook admits HTML5 not competitive with Cocoa Touch" [3]: https://techcrunch.com/2012/12/13/facebook-android-faster/ "Facebook Speeds Up Android App By Ditching HTML5 And Rebuilding It Natively…

It strikes me that, more than anything, it is the lack of an efficient "Add to Home Screen" flow, that has doomed mobile websites.

...and it's intentional. By having an app store, mobile OS distributors know that they have control over a massive revenue stream.

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

#244

Post by DevoAKA »

anderspitman wrote: post #234
phreack wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can't be overstated how many apps are absolutely dependent on working push notifications (all chat for example) and can't be replicated as websites. And that's not yet implemented for iOS so we're all at Apple's mercy until it is, which may never be.

Honest question: is there some reason you can't use standard web tech for push notifications? ie polling, WebSockets, etc?

You can use polling or sockets when the browser is open; the problem is showing those notifications on the phone's lock screen or when you're in another app.

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

#245

Post by dmamills »

Androider wrote: post #158
KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #47

Can anyone from Shopify directly address the points brought up in the Airbnb posts.

Shopify CEO expressed his thoughts on the matter quite succinctly https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1222551057798090752

The Shopify CEO is going to be pretty disappointed when he finds out all of those diamonds are actually just npm audit fixes, dramatically out of date packages, and strange platform specific behavior regardless of the "write once, run everywhere" tagline.

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

#246

Post by misiti3780 »

wdb wrote: post #113
anon9001 wrote: post #76

Shopify is right to use React Native. I build an app with React Native Web and we produce Android/iOS/web from the same code base with 3 developers. No, it's not perfect. Yes, JS can be awkward and confusing. Yes, a truly native app built by expert platform-specific developers would be better. But I'm able to ship this product with less than half the team size I would need for native development. JavaScript developer…

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.

expo is taking care of this, not there yet, but getting better every day.

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

#247

Post by [deleted] »

divbzero wrote: post #184
newfeatureok wrote: post #7

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 th…

Ten years ago Facebook fought this battle and lost. [1] [2] [3] [1]: https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/using-ht... "Using HTML5 Today" [2]: https://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/11/facebook_admits_h... "Facebook admits HTML5 not competitive with Cocoa Touch" [3]: https://techcrunch.com/2012/12/13/facebook-android-faster/ "Facebook Speeds Up Android App By Ditching HTML5 And Rebuilding It Natively…

[deleted]

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

#248

Post by hugey010 »

pjmlp wrote: post #179
hugey010 wrote: post #101

I thought the cool thing to do was declare React Native dead for your org, not the new hotness?!? I try to re-evaluate my opinion of the mobile ecosystem monthly, and would love to know how people agree / disagree with my rankings: 1. Just make a web page 2. Native iOS & Android 3. Flutter 4. Some ordering of remaining cross-platform tools depending on requirements. (React Native, Vue Native, Xamarin, Ionic, Titanium…

I have a different order: 1. Just make a web page (specially since many apps are just pretty CRUD ones) 1.1 For certain devices WebGL/WebAssembly can eventually also be an option 2. Native iOS & Android 3. Native iOS & Android with server side driven code for the business logic (maybe even UI layouts) 4. Native iOS & Android for the views with C++ for business logic 5. Your point .4 regarding cross-platform tools I d…

Totally agree with your 3 and 4.

I've had, to my surprise, the most success with Flutter. (I've built multiple React web apps and spent way longer attempting React Native.)

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

#249

Post by Normal_gaussian »

beefield wrote: post #221
Normal_gaussian wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

several applications require them to be useful. Security events from my home cameras, messages from clients, timers, email Anytime I'm using a peice of small business software I'd probably like it to be able to give me notifications

Honestly curious and hopefully not rude, but how can you concentrate on anything? Or does your work/life not require you to concentrate ever/most of the time on anything? (I have turned all but phone call and sms notifications off on my phone. I will check my email/whatsapp when I want and see notifications there as needed. If someone has something urgent, they know how to call.)

Simply, it doesn't affect me adversely at all. I think you have a misunderstanding as to how many notifications are generated.

Today I received:

* 3 reminders to eat

* 1 security alert (delivery)

* about two dozen instant messages between myself and clients

* a couple of dozen CI alerts

* 3 emails

Its easy to have different levels of notifications, and filter message channels. I have less distraction now than I had in an office by several orders of magnitude.

Everything is either immediately relevant or very important. The notifications I have make me more effective.

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

#250

Post by ojr »

newfeatureok wrote: post #7

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 th…

Other things missing: Contacts, Device Identifier, In-app Purchases, and a trustworthy distribution platform with a large base of affluent customers.
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