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Expo – Open-source platform for making universal apps for Android, iOS, and web

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Re: Expo – Open-source platform for making universal apps for Android, iOS, and web

#101

Post by xctr94 »

afavour wrote: post #90

I’m primarily a web developer that’s long been interested in native mobile environments and after trying out many of these cross platform frameworks (all the way back to Appcelerator for those who remember!) my conclusion always ends up that they’re almost always a bad idea. The experience is inferior to native, it’s full of compromises to make cross platform work and you’re at the mercy of a company standing between…

After 4 years of doing cross-platform mobile, I loathe React and React Native by now, and I dislike Expo. But… suggesting any other alternative is tricky.

True native development is, indeed, much better. But a small team will be hard-pressed for doing good work on both platforms, especially once you start fiddling with more important APIs. Configuration and getting your system to compile things to properly is almost a job in itself. Sigh.

KMM, Flutter, and MAUI are all promising, but with different trade-offs.

So we’re stuck with RN/Expo… At least Expo promises some stability between upgrades, by handling the package compatibility checks for you. Well, when it works.

“Make a progressive web app”: yes, that might be the way to go; provided you can get the users to ‘install’ it on their devices. For some companies that’s not optional due to different pressures (e.g. teachers would expect students to have our app installed on their phones).

Neither of these 2 solutions is that simple. There are trade-offs involved, and each team must compromise where they can/are weaker. All in all, if you MUST do RN, at least Expo saves you a lot of headaches with config/build/compatibility. It’s mediocre, but worlds better than pure RN (at least for me).

Re: Expo – Open-source platform for making universal apps for Android, iOS, and web

#102

Post by cuddlyogre »

afavour wrote: post #90

I’m primarily a web developer that’s long been interested in native mobile environments and after trying out many of these cross platform frameworks (all the way back to Appcelerator for those who remember!) my conclusion always ends up that they’re almost always a bad idea. The experience is inferior to native, it’s full of compromises to make cross platform work and you’re at the mercy of a company standing between…

Almost no one knows what a progressive web app is. And for most people, the only way they use the internet on their phones is through apps. It just doesn't occur to them to do otherwise.

I wish things were different. It would have saved our company almost a year's worth of development on a pwa.

Re: Expo – Open-source platform for making universal apps for Android, iOS, and web

#103

Post by willsmith72 »

afavour wrote: post #90

I’m primarily a web developer that’s long been interested in native mobile environments and after trying out many of these cross platform frameworks (all the way back to Appcelerator for those who remember!) my conclusion always ends up that they’re almost always a bad idea. The experience is inferior to native, it’s full of compromises to make cross platform work and you’re at the mercy of a company standing between…

That decision completely depends on the context. For a small team, without too much native experience, I'd still 100% recommend using expo. It's just going to be easier for everyone with less bottlenecks and less code to maintain.

If PWAs were actually used by the mass markets, I'd go with that option, but the fact is they're not, and you can't expect to force your users to learn a new behaviour like that.

Re: Expo – Open-source platform for making universal apps for Android, iOS, and web

#104

Post by afavour »

cuddlyogre wrote: post #102
afavour wrote: post #90

I’m primarily a web developer that’s long been interested in native mobile environments and after trying out many of these cross platform frameworks (all the way back to Appcelerator for those who remember!) my conclusion always ends up that they’re almost always a bad idea. The experience is inferior to native, it’s full of compromises to make cross platform work and you’re at the mercy of a company standing between…

Almost no one knows what a progressive web app is. And for most people, the only way they use the internet on their phones is through apps. It just doesn't occur to them to do otherwise. I wish things were different. It would have saved our company almost a year's worth of development on a pwa.

This is highly dependent on your target market. On Android PWAs effectively are apps as far as users are concerned, you can even make a “WebAPK” and submit it to the Play Store.

The story on iOS is much worse, naturally. But if you can get past getting users to actually install the app the rest of the experience is acceptable.

Re: Expo – Open-source platform for making universal apps for Android, iOS, and web

#105

Post by synergy20 »

qazxcvbnm wrote: post #58
artdigital wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK using -—local still requires an eas account though.

It does. It's possible to make a patchset that lifts this restriction, though. If you're interested, I'd be willing to make it available.

please do so, I would like to build it totally local and when I realize that outsourcing the build to the EAS cloud saves more time and money I will switch later, that sounds like a nice way to get more people use Expo.

Re: Expo – Open-source platform for making universal apps for Android, iOS, and web

#106

Post by scop »

norman784 wrote: post #95
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #78

I used to maintain Detox for iOS when I was at Wix, from 2017 to 2021. We ended up dropping support for Expo for plenty of reasons, some technical, some "political". The people reporting "issues" (more like asking questions) for their Expo apps, usually had very little technical understanding of any of the increasingly thick environment stack (the Expo layer, RN layer, UI framework layer, OS layer). They were basical…

I learned a while ago that is not worth using an abstraction layer over the official tooling (whatever Apple and Google provides you), even for small apps I was building one for each platform (as one dev). Tried at the time Xamarin and PhoneGap, and bit later RN, each one has his quirks and things that works in one platform but not in other so in the end you end up building one app for each platform more or less, but…

I’ve come to the same conclusion. I began to build a very simple app about a month ago and as a Web Dev figured React Native would be the best tool. Having completed about 60% of the app, I’m going to trash the whole thing and restart with Swift/Kotlin. I’ve encountered too many “quirks” that end up burning a huge amount of time for what should be an inconsequential component.

Re: Expo – Open-source platform for making universal apps for Android, iOS, and web

#107

Post by qazxcvbnm »

synergy20 wrote: post #105
qazxcvbnm wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does. It's possible to make a patchset that lifts this restriction, though. If you're interested, I'd be willing to make it available.

please do so, I would like to build it totally local and when I realize that outsourcing the build to the EAS cloud saves more time and money I will switch later, that sounds like a nice way to get more people use Expo.

I've put a link to it on my other comment. Hope it helps.

Re: Expo – Open-source platform for making universal apps for Android, iOS, and web

#108

Post by afavour »

willsmith72 wrote: post #103
afavour wrote: post #90

I’m primarily a web developer that’s long been interested in native mobile environments and after trying out many of these cross platform frameworks (all the way back to Appcelerator for those who remember!) my conclusion always ends up that they’re almost always a bad idea. The experience is inferior to native, it’s full of compromises to make cross platform work and you’re at the mercy of a company standing between…

That decision completely depends on the context. For a small team, without too much native experience, I'd still 100% recommend using expo. It's just going to be easier for everyone with less bottlenecks and less code to maintain. If PWAs were actually used by the mass markets, I'd go with that option, but the fact is they're not, and you can't expect to force your users to learn a new behaviour like that.

> For a small team, without too much native experience, I'd still 100% recommend using expo.

Maybe I'm too optimistic but as a web developer I loved being given the opportunity to learn some Swift and Kotlin. Compared to Objective C and Java they are really very approachable for JS devs and with not all that much work you'll end up with a deeper bench of developers more satisfied with their jobs.

Re: Expo – Open-source platform for making universal apps for Android, iOS, and web

#109

Post by chainwax »

siquick wrote: post #62

Would it be fair to say that Expo is to RN what Next.js is to React?

No I don't think so. Next.js adds a truckload of functionality to React, plus handles the server side, etc.

Expo aims to abstract away everything that a web developer wouldn't inherently understand when moving to mobile, i.e. the native stuff. Whether or not it succeeds in that mission, or if it's worth it, is up for debate.

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