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React Native for Windows and Mac

microsoft.github.io

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Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#191

Post by int_19h »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #155
int_19h wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In which ecosystem? If you mean desktop apps in general, then there are many other options. Qt and wxWidgets, to name a couple of popular ones that have been around for a very long time.

My problem with those two is the damn C++ API. I’ve used both in the past, but I’ve moved on from C++ for desktop applications to greener pastures but these toolkits’ APIs are a pita to use via ffi.

They're both pretty popular to wrap; I'm surprised that whatever language/ecosystem you're using doesn't have a wrapper lib already.

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#192

Post by scarface74 »

macinjosh wrote: post #164
scarface74 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this reason, I've been trying out Flutter or even considering to go back to native apps. This says so much about the sad state of modern software development... When native development is a last resort.

Why does it have to be sad? To me it is good news! Especially if it is open source. The more software we can write that isn’t specific to a platform the more free and useful software can become. It wrestles back control from google, apple, microsoft et. al and makes their closed platforms less relevant.

"Useful" as long as you don't care about battery life, memory usage, taking advantage of features of the host platform, or the native UI.

As an end user why do I care about "openness"? If I pay a premium for my platform, why would I want second rate cross platform software?

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#193

Post by scarface74 »

diss wrote: post #188
scarface74 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this reason, I've been trying out Flutter or even considering to go back to native apps. This says so much about the sad state of modern software development... When native development is a last resort.

I don't think so, if RN or similar is a viable option then it makes far more sense than juggling large Java and Swift implementations of the same app.

Or the alternative is not to have run bloated cross platform apps and run native apps....

Why would you think React Native would be less bloated than native apps?

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#194

Post by 43920 »

freefriedrice wrote: post #144
43920 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electron supports multiple windows, but it ends up being annoying to do because each window runs in its own process. If your app has any kind of central state that's shared between windows, you end up copying data between processes frequently, which can be slow. Rendering consistency is generally pretty good; I haven't run into any issues with that.

This bugs me to no end about Electron. The one module that existed to implement cross window / process communication is deprecated with no alternative. I haven't found a solution for multithreading in electron without killing the base process (which they explicitly say NOT to do compute in) or the rendering process (duh).

Web workers launched from the renderer work fairly well if you just need compute. I think I've also seen some apps add an additional BrowserWindow that's never displayed onscreen, although that will increase your memory overhead.

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#195

Post by diss »

scarface74 wrote: post #193
diss wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so, if RN or similar is a viable option then it makes far more sense than juggling large Java and Swift implementations of the same app.

Or the alternative is not to have run bloated cross platform apps and run native apps.... Why would you think React Native would be less bloated than native apps?

I don't think it would be less bloated, it's impossible for a layer on top of native to be less bloated. That's not to say it couldn't be efficient, and efficiency in development time is the key factor. It can be a nightmare to manage apps across different platforms, frameworks and languages. RN could be massively improved, but the concept is a godsend.

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#196

Post by andrewingram »

filleduchaos wrote: post #107
peterhunt wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sure, but it gives you the list of packages to look at in the dependency visualizer

It gives you a list of directly depended-upon packages. It doesn't give you a list of _those_ packages' dependencies, or _their_ dependencies, which funnily enough also get installed when you install your direct dependencies. Plus I forgot to address this in my earlier comment: that visualizer only shows dependencies. By default it doesn't load any dev dependencies. You can confirm that for yourself by checking out h…

Your last paragraph is a bit inaccurate. The dependencies are needed by people developing WITH React Native as opposed to devDependencies (which are for people developing ON React Native). So whilst you will be using the complicated graph of dependencies at some point, that isn't the same as saying they'll be shipped to end users of the app.

The line between dependencies and devDependencies got blurry the second npm packages got used for more than just Node.js itself. What's really needed to remove the ambiguity is something like prodDependencies, which would be a subset of the current dependencies, but I don't know if it's really worth it.

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#197

Post by jiofih »

throwaway6734 wrote: post #128
Exuma wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was the worst experience of my development life, building a phone app with it........................ never, never, never again. If you want to know what it's like to have everything break LITERALLY every few days, use react native.

As someone just getting into mobile development, I've enjoyed using it significantly more than native iOS/Android. It's so much faster and more straightforward to spin up designs,

Until your first update. I assume you didn’t work on anything that has been released?

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#198

Post by NateEag »

happa wrote: post #129
ProAm wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with flutter is you never know when Google will stop investing in the product at any moment when the devs shift their priority.and let it die on the vine.

People love to say this but rarely provide concrete examples. Google has a habit of discontinuing unsuccessful services, not technologies like SDKs or whole programming languages.

Angular.js is currently causing problems for me, as it's going to be unsupported in about a year.

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#199

Post by Spivak »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #183
hpen wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be happy to add Windows as a platform to my apps. More market == more money. Only as an add-on. I wouldn't want to write Windows exclusive apps for sure.

Not meant to disparage, but how lucrative is that market? How much do Windows users (outside of business) actually spend on software (regardless of business model)? It's a leading question, but a sincere one.

Who buys software outside of businesses? God I feel like I haven’t paid for a stand-alone piece of software in years.

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#200

Post by sophiebits »

zapzupnz wrote: post #184

I'd love to see some dog-fooding on this. Maybe a branch of VS Code for RN. I mean, say what you will about the quality of even Apple's own Catalyst apps, but at least they eat their own dogfood (although with the unfortunate consequence of making us eat it, too). There are so many different competing projects at MS to do practically the same thing, it'd be great to see RN for Windows and macOS used for something maj…

Last I heard, they are using it for at least significant parts of Office and Skype.
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