Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native • Hacker News Board

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

#451

Post by octodog » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 2:56 AM UTC

Normal_gaussian wrote: post #249

beefield wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Do you use Whatsapp / Messenger regularly for social stuff? Coincidentally I was looking at my Digital Well-being settings in Android today and was told that I get over 170 notifications from Messenger a day.

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

#452

Post by nilkn » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 2:59 AM UTC

tspike wrote: post #430

nilkn wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that not a tremendous optimization for the team? It probably cuts the team size in half (or, seen another way, doubles its size for free), and it unifies of a lot of the mobile and web stacks behind similar languages and tools, which in turn would allow some unification in the hiring and recruiting pipelines.

This overstates the gains by a lot. 1) Each platform still requires a good amount of special attention. 2) The React Native project introduces breaking changes far more frequently than the underlying platforms 3) Being an abstraction layer, eventually something will break, and you’ll still need someone who understands cryptic linker errors and platform specific quirks. There are cases where it definitely makes sense,…

I would argue to the contrary that it’s such a large optimization that even accounting for all of that it’s still a big net win from a staffing perspective. It’s far easier to maintain a few Android experts on staff than an entire department of them.

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

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Post by hopia » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 3:05 AM UTC

stefano wrote: post #231

hopia wrote: post #189

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I don't see how it's any crazier than publicly declaring React Native as their future like this.

With React Native, you're betting on a framework. With Flutter, you're betting on both a framework and a new language. Flutter also works on a much lower level than RN, which means it would be harder for them to pick up the development if the need should arise.

Dart is something very similar to Java, not much of a bet to jump into it. Moreover, it has type soundness, something Typescript cannot achieve.

I'm not so sure it would be easy to continue RN core development either. From what I see even just upgrading the JS engine from an ancient version was a major hassle for the core team.

In RN there's simply more moving parts. You work with 3 package managers at the same time, possibly even 3 languages. At least at this stage Flutter just seems overall more productive for the developer.

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

#454

Post by asdff » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 3:10 AM UTC

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…

With all of your most used apps, you could just switch to using web apps. You can save any mobile site to the home screen of your iphone with safari.

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

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Post by gumby » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 3:10 AM UTC

varrock wrote: post #445

gumby wrote: post #400

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> more than anything, it is the lack of an efficient "Add to Home Screen" flow, that has doomed mobile websites...and it's intentional It’s literally a default option on the safari “share” button: “Add to Home Screen”. I’m not sure how Apple could have made it easier.

Because it's not very intuitive that the share button would allow you to add something to your home screen.

TBF that icon is kind of apple's system hamburger as it contains sharing, sending the current "thing" to other apps, searching etc. If you don't know that (and I agree it's terrible, but at least it's consistent) you probably don't know you can add a page to the homepage at all.

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

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Post by asdff » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 3:12 AM UTC

criddell wrote: post #413

pjmlp wrote: post #81

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It depends pretty much on what the app is all about. CRUD mobile apps can be made pretty fast when not doing an SPA bigger than Quake just for displaying text. SSR, pure CSS3, caching, server workers, mobile first, can go a long way. Naturally there are other kind of apps where native wins hands down, e.g. WebGL vs GL ES 3.2/Vulkan/Metal/DX.

Performance is about a lot more than speed. I want low battery, CPU, data, and memory usage. That's a lot harder to do in a web app.

It's the native apps that kill my battery, fetching content in the background all the time, not the mobile web which is suspended when I exit safari.

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

#457

Post by asdff » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 3:14 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #316

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…

Users hate web apps, especially on mobile, and it has nothing to do with functionality. Web apps on the App Store invariably provoke angry screeds about how the look and feel is not right. Native apps are even more essential on mobile. On the desktop, web apps just look weird and waste battery life. On mobile, they feel wrong. That difference in feel provokes visceral hatred.

The biggest problem with mobile apps is that you don't always have a reliable connection to the internet, even when your carrier is claiming you have 4g lte with all the bars.

Web apps should really have the option to cache the page entirely for offline use.

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

#458

Post by asdff » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 3:19 AM UTC

edgyquant wrote: post #95

akmarinov wrote: post #20

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I use Facebook's as I don't want Facebook's grubby hands using private APIs on my phone to get every bit of data they can. At least the browser limits them.

Plus the facebook app eats battery life. IME my phone battery lasts all day unless I install facebook: then it lasts a few hours.

and for whatever mind boggling reason their stand alone chat client is 300mb.

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

#459

Post by asdff » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 3:24 AM UTC

seemack wrote: post #99

lazyier wrote: post #33

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> Honestly I think the future of mobile will just be... mobile websites. This. Having to install software on my phone to use a service is cringy as hell and is a huge red flag for me. Like when trying to order food from a restaurant or shop somewhere. It's almost always going to be a automatic no. I just don't trust them. They always want permissions to access things on my phone, which is just pure nonsense. It's goi…

I agree with the overall points, less so the pointless vitriol. Installing software is cringey as hell now? The main issue here isn't native apps. It's the existing framework for installing them. For instance, would it be that far-fetched to be able to open an app in a single click? Current extended process: 1) Click link that takes me to app store page 2) Find and click install button 3) wait 4) Click "open app" but…

It's cringy when you see how reddit does it. Or far worse, yelp. I would personally love to meet whoever approved the yelp mobile website and app so I could shake their hand and thank them for making the world just a little bit more horrible in their own small way.

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

#460

Post by asdff » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 3:31 AM UTC

partiallypro wrote: post #185

avip wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offline is still a thing.

But website can be packed up and saved as PWAs, also "offline sites" have been a thing since the 90s.

pwa are one thing, but safari based web apps are nothing more than a bookmark that happens to sit on your home screen. should they and could they be catched? absolutely. does apple care enough about us nerds with our web apps to implement a 30 year old feature? not at all.