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React Native for Windows and Mac

microsoft.github.io

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Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#321

Post by pjmlp »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #226
scarface74 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

> 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? Falsehoods HNers believe about how people buy/use software. Didn't stop Slack/Discord from become ubiquitous. "But native tho" just becomes a circlejerk. Talking about what users care about, most people don't know what native means nor if a given app is it. They don't know if Zoom…

I use Slack and other Electron based applications because my job requires it, imposed by our IT or customers, not because I freely have chosen to use them or have the liberty to look for alternatives.

Other than VSCode for Rust and TypeScript, my own personal computer is as much Electron free as possible.

So don't mistake market share for freedom of choice.

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#322

Post by realharo »

mythz wrote: post #319
realharo wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flutter itself seems nice, but Dart as a language is a pretty big downgrade from TypeScript. For mobile right now, the easiest, most headache-free solution may actually be to forget about cross-platform and just do separate Android and iOS native apps. You won't need to do things like hunt for a bunch of 3rd party libraries whenever you need to use Bluetooth or something. Once SwiftUI and Jetpack Compose mature, that…

> Flutter itself seems nice, but Dart as a language is a pretty big downgrade from TypeScript. It definitely isn't, Dart is an advanced clean, strongly typed classical language without JS's warts that's just as clean & productive with a clean complete & well-defined standard library, native support for modules, consistent async/await in all libraries, etc. I love TypeScript, but it's major productivity advantage over…

As far as I know, Dart still has all types nullable by default, which makes it easy to run into problems with things like initialization (not realizing that a thing may still be uninitialized at some point / only loaded later) or just plain optional data (assuming some thing is always present when sometimes it's not). It's like partially dropping down to dynamic typing, where you have to keep all this in your head manually every time you refactor a part of the code.

It also doesn't seem to have things like sum types, which would be pretty easy to do in an AOT language. The expresiveness, the ability to accurately describe data structures with its type system just doesn't seem to be there. It seems about on par with Java in that regard. Fast live reload is pretty good though, I hope other langauges/frameworks put more effort into that.

I haven't used it much beyond simple demos though.

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#323

Post by iainmerrick »

I asked this on a previous React Native thread, and I’m still curious: is RN (on mobile, as that’s where it’s currently used) actually faster than something like PhoneGap? Are there any benchmarks or demos? Anyone got any anecdotes of a like-for-like comparison?

I’m skeptical (though certainly willing to be convinced) because RN runs your JS application in a separate thread from the UI, with a rather expensive bridge sending JSON messages back and forth. That seems to me a poor design choice.

Browsers have the downside of working with the complex DOM that doesn’t map as well to native widgets. But browsers are mature and highly optimized. So I would guess that performance might be a wash.

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#324

Post by scarface74 »

what-the-grump wrote: post #310
scarface74 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not forget that MS Teams has more paying users than Slack.... How many people know that Slack is battery draining monstrosity? The only people that pay for Slack are companies. The definition of Enterprise Software is where the user is not the customer.

Hmm this one is tough Office 365 has more paying users on teams. I doubt anyone is paying for teams, also they are not direct competitors. We use both, likely to get phones with teams in the future as well.

Whether it is fair or not that Teams comes with Office is irrelevant. This is Slack's competition. They have to convince companies that it is worth paying extra for their product.

In the famous words of Jobs about Dropbox -- chat isn't a product, it's a feature.

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#325

Post by pjmlp »

scarface74 wrote: post #302
Barrin92 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I pay a premium for my platform this is something that you might value but I think it's fair to say it is already a minority position. phones and the web have become the primary platform for software delivery, and people do not treat their desktop if they even have one as some sort of premium platform, it's a terminal for the internet. at this point, people are probably more familiar with the look and feel of we…

Follow the money. People pay for what they value. Who is paying money for desktop software besides games, Office 365, and the Adobe Creative Suite? Who values desktop software enough to pay for it? I know in the Mac market at least, the few indy developers making money are not writing apps using cross platform SDKs.

Lots of business running Windows on their labs and using desktop software for various use cases, like data analysis.

Plenty of money to be made desktop solutions to life sciences, manufacturing, factory automation, aren't plugging their air gaped dashboards to the web.

Anyone doing music composition, graphics, animation, infotainment systems.

In Europe there are enough Win32, WPF, UWP, Qt related jobs and consulting projects with hourly rates to do a comfortable living.

As for B2C, it is always going to be an uphill battle regardless of the application type, there are only so many application types that one is willing to pay for outside established brands, and SaaS is a much better way to avoid piracy and get everyone to pay.

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#326

Post by krzat »

scarface74 wrote: post #142
wyc wrote: post #17

React Native scares me with its dependency webs: http://npm.anvaka.com/#/view/2d/react-native From my experience, it's really great to work with and definitely saves a ton of work, but the depgraph above fills me with doubt for use in sensitive applications such as in finance or healthcare. For this reason, I've been trying out Flutter or even considering to go back to native apps. Perhaps there's some kind of middle…

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.

Writing the same thing multiple times is also sad. On desktops, it was understood long time ago.

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#327

Post by firloop »

iainmerrick wrote: post #323

I asked this on a previous React Native thread, and I’m still curious: is RN (on mobile, as that’s where it’s currently used) actually faster than something like PhoneGap? Are there any benchmarks or demos? Anyone got any anecdotes of a like-for-like comparison? I’m skeptical (though certainly willing to be convinced) because RN runs your JS application in a separate thread from the UI, with a rather expensive bridge…

Performance is just one reason companies adapt something like React Native, the ability to have web developers* come in and string native-quality components together is another. React Native can feel better than mobile web and have access to lower level APIs.

* I think this is more of a selling point than a reality. I think in practice, to make a React Native feel and work well requires native platform knowledge.

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#328

Post by pjmlp »

filleduchaos wrote: post #62
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows Forms was released on 2002 and is still supported by Microsoft. How long do you think Flutter will be supported by Google? For dev technology, Microsoft has a well-deserved reputation for supporting products for a long time.

> How long do you think Flutter will be supported by Google? I am curious about how often this sentiment gets brought up about Go or Kubernetes.

I guess it depends on how frozen Go features happen to remain. while all modern alternatives release their value types + AOT tooling support.

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#329

Post by scarface74 »

krzat wrote: post #326
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.

Writing the same thing multiple times is also sad. On desktops, it was understood long time ago.

Sad for who?

Yes and a long time ago Sun came out with Swing. How did that work out?

Even before that MS came out with P-Code and the abomination that was Word 6 for the Mac.

Re: React Native for Windows and Mac

#330

Post by tomphoolery »

peterhunt wrote: post #41
wyc wrote: post #17

React Native scares me with its dependency webs: http://npm.anvaka.com/#/view/2d/react-native From my experience, it's really great to work with and definitely saves a ton of work, but the depgraph above fills me with doubt for use in sensitive applications such as in finance or healthcare. For this reason, I've been trying out Flutter or even considering to go back to native apps. Perhaps there's some kind of middle…

Wow, that React Native dep graph is crazy! But as I browse it, most of the dependencies seem to be build-time, not runtime dependencies (i.e. it seems like most of them are related to Babel). The React comparison doesn't include dev dependencies. While react-native does have more dependencies than vanilla react, on first glance the list doesn't seem too crazy https://github.com/facebook/react-native/blob/master/packa…

The longer you leave that dependency graph up, the more it starts to look like the Huddle from Inside...
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