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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

#321

Post by ipsum2 »

secondo wrote: post #10

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 Na…

React is also controlled by Facebook, and yet is one of the most popular Javascript frameworks. I don't see how React Native would be any different.

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

#322

Post by xeonoex »

tr33house wrote: post #310
mleonhard wrote: post #299

> The first is a tooling team that helps with engineering setup, integration and deployment. The second is a foundations team that focuses on SDKs, code reuse and open source. They have a whole team to set up tooling for React Native. I wasted many days trying to do this work on my own. They also have a whole team for evaluating 3rd-party libraries that provide functionality missing from React Native, such as letting…

How has flutter compared?

Not OP, but I've tried all of the big SPA frameworks (not specifically react native though) and I decided to use flutter for a non-trivial side project and I don't ever want to touch the big SPA frameworks ever again. Flutter is also fast, pretty lightweight, and good on battery. It feels native on iOS and Android. I have little Android development experience (side project years ago) and no iOS experience.

It's easy to setup, install, and it just works. I develop on Windows and Mac with a .NET Core backend and communicating via GRPC. Deploying the backend to a CentOS server. No issues running anything on Windows, Mac, or Linux, surprisingly. Whenever I have to use node, everything randomly breaks when switching environments. (Maybe I'm just bad with node/webpack and all that, but there is way too much I have to know to just build something).

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

#323

Post by scarface74 »

koheripbal wrote: post #243
divbzero wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There has been an add to home screen shortcut on iOS since day 1.

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

#324

Post by kllrnohj »

AgloeDreams wrote: post #286
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…

> acceptable performance Until your competitor shows up. I think you are honestly right for the most cases, but the expectation on mobile, (esp. since the OS is written in native and 120Hz screens are coming) is so freaking high. The touch response rate expected is just going to make hybrid and web apps just seem like trash to the average consumer when compared directly with native apps. They just don't do it and jus…

> esp. since the OS is written in native and 120Hz screens are coming

High-refresh rate mobile displays already happened. There's more 90Hz than 120Hz on the market at the moment. Typically gamer-focused phones like the Asus ROG Phone or the Razer Phone, but non-gamer-focused flagships are also now 90Hz like the Pixel 4.

And of course on the iOS side of the ecosystem some iPad models already have 120hz displays, too.

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

#326

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

Androider wrote: post #169
SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know much about RN or Flutter; but why is it “insane” that flutter cant exist in 10 years but RN will still be king? Why can’t RN die within 10 years? Because it’s been around since 2013 vs 2017? Because you like one more than the other? I have concerns about Google’s commitment to Dart/Flutter, but I’m not sure one scenario is pants on head insane and the other just fact.

React Native could very well fall out of favor in the next 10 years, but the amount of companies using it today means there is a sufficient base to share the maintenance burden with, of which Shopify could potentially carry a large amount because of the significant overlap with the rest of their tech stack. If Google becomes disinterested in Dart, could Shopify step up and maintain it? Seems unlikely, and why on Eart…

Not to be TOO snarky but... I'm sure there are a whole bunch of Angular 1.0 people who said the same thing.

I'm not convinced it's a worse idea to guess lottery numbers than to guess what will be successful languages. To that point however, React isn't a language (or a framework) it's a library.

I would say Google has more to lose by dropping Dart and Flutter as a language and frame work than Facebook has/had by dropping React.

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

#327

Post by reaperducer »

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…

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

That was Steve Jobs' original vision for the iPhone.

The difficulty was that once the App Store launched, people and middle managers thought that if a company didn't have an "app," it wasn't a real company.

Now that the web has matured, there are not that many things outside of games that require an app. But there are still many people (including many in my own company) that think an "app" adds credibility to a company, even if that app does less than the web site.

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

#328

Post by rubyn00bie »

Random_Person wrote: post #78
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.

The sites I build at work have proper push notifications. This problem has already been solved.

I will never enable push notifications from websites. This problem has not been solved. It also doesn't hold across devices or if the browser isn't open.

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

#329

Post by scarface74 »

bostik wrote: post #280
koheripbal wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A good part of it is their absolutely massive 30% cut. The only reason they get away with it is that when Apple's app store first came out, most of the online casual applications were games. Hosted by a few gargantuan aggregators ( cough newgrounds cough ) who charged 70%+ of the revenue for their ... service. Against a backdrop of above-criminal-rates extortion, 30% must have looked like a bargain. To put these numb…

Most of the money being made on the App Store is for in app consumables from pay to win games. You’ll have to forgive me for not shedding a tear for them. I hope Apple Arcade takes a huge chunk of their revenue.

It’s not indy developers trying to make a living.

The other types of apps that use to make Apple a lot of money are streaming services. But most of those are now not allowing you to do in app purchases.

I’m looking through all of my apps, and I only have two or three that I actually paid money via in app purchases and those were to turn off ads.

All of the rest I had to buy subscriptions on the app makers websites or buy content in the case of Amazon for Kindle books.

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

#330

Post by reaperducer »

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…

Ten years ago Facebook fought this battle and lost.

That was ten years ago. Phones and web sites have changed a lot since 2010.

If the battle was re-fought today, I'm not sure the winner would be all that clear.

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