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What do you dislike about React Native?

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Re: What do you dislike about React Native?

#21

Post by warmblanket »

paraditedc wrote: post #7
debt wrote: post #2

It would be tight if we could purge from the web all posts and threads related to unsupported and outdated ReactNative versions. It's actually quite interesting to see the almost in real-time development of ReactNative through the lens of hobbled and broke-ass solutions to problems associated with deprecated RN versions posted on StackOverflow or Medium.

As someone who used to write frontend blog posts, I found this issue particularly frustrating, as an author. I have posts about Angular.js, webpack, React Apollo, etc and they become outdated every 6 months. The problem is that I wouldn't know about it. Despite having lots pageviews and me asking readers to help notify me in comments, people just come, read and close the window. So the one way I found out they were o…

I think it’s a good idea to list versions at the top of the articles.

Re: What do you dislike about React Native?

#22

Post by dep_b »

EpicEng wrote: post #12
dep_b wrote: post #11

* Javascript * NPM * It's still 0.59 or something and things are constantly breaking * Because of that every piece of information older than 1 month should be distrusted * App size * It doesn't play well when you try to gradually replace or add RN screens to an existing application. * There are multiple ways to do the same thing * It adds another layer on top of the iOS and Android builds

* Javascript * NPM * It's still 0.59 or something and things are constantly breaking * Because of that every piece of information older than 1 month should be distrusted * App size * It doesn't play well when you try to gradually replace or add RN screens to an existing application. * There are multiple ways to do the same thing * It adds another layer on top of the iOS and Android builds

Thanks! Fixed it.

Re: What do you dislike about React Native?

#23

Post by gaze »

throwaway66666 wrote: post #19

I will probably be heavily downvoted but here goes nothing. I have not used React Native yet, but I followed and was heavily invested in the "write once deploy anywhere" trend between 2009 - 2014. From phonegap (before it became cordova), to Adobe Air with it's bad performance and "native extensions", to Appcelerator Titanium that put a nodejs server in your phone and even had Windows Phone 7 support, to cordova, to…

I think deep down people understand that native development is better but somehow there's too much inertia behind everything being browser based. It's really frustrating. I genuinely miss Delphi.

Re: What do you dislike about React Native?

#24

Post by pier25 »

I tried RN in early 2016 but Android support and documentation were not great.

Honestly, I've always thought that RN (and similar approaches) is kinda a hack. Yes, it solves a problem of reducing developer time across platforms, but it introduces other more obscure problems. A JavaScript engine with it's own set of problems giving orders through some bridge to the native part... I don't know, it's a lot of moving pieces.

I feel Flutter is so much more solid in this respect. The approach has been used countless times by game engines such as Unity, UE, etc. The part where Google has to replicate the UI elements of each platform is not amazing, but otherwise I feel it's a much more solid approach than RN.

Re: What do you dislike about React Native?

#25

Post by rolleiflex »

throwaway66666 wrote: post #19

I will probably be heavily downvoted but here goes nothing. I have not used React Native yet, but I followed and was heavily invested in the "write once deploy anywhere" trend between 2009 - 2014. From phonegap (before it became cordova), to Adobe Air with it's bad performance and "native extensions", to Appcelerator Titanium that put a nodejs server in your phone and even had Windows Phone 7 support, to cordova, to…

Everyone intrinsically understands that native is better, and I'm saying this as somebody who runs a 120k LoC Electron app (https://getaether.net) myself.

I'm painfully aware that native is better, all day, every day.

The problem is this: I'm a solo founder. I am both the engineer and designer (and PM). The alternative for me would be not to write a Mac app, a Windows app, and a Linux app separately, and have them work.

The alternative would be for Aether to not exist.

You're expressing a sentiment that everyone feels, but you're off on why — it's not change aversion, but the simple fact that these technologies make trying new things cheaper, things, by definition, that would be too expensive to try in slower-to-build tech.

In my case, a compromise I found worked was to use JS for just the UI and write all code that does something in Go. Since that code is native binary, it's fast and efficient. Vue in Electron handles the 'client' UI, and interacts with the Go app binaries via gRPC.

Re: What do you dislike about React Native?

#26

Post by slow_donkey »

throwaway66666 wrote: post #19

I will probably be heavily downvoted but here goes nothing. I have not used React Native yet, but I followed and was heavily invested in the "write once deploy anywhere" trend between 2009 - 2014. From phonegap (before it became cordova), to Adobe Air with it's bad performance and "native extensions", to Appcelerator Titanium that put a nodejs server in your phone and even had Windows Phone 7 support, to cordova, to…

Most apps are API based and react native works perfectly fine for them - I've done all 3 and in general, RN performance is sufficient. Previous cross platform frameworks were pretty disappointing but I truly believe rn is well engineered.

Re: What do you dislike about React Native?

#28

Post by neurotrace »

throwaway66666 wrote: post #19

I will probably be heavily downvoted but here goes nothing. I have not used React Native yet, but I followed and was heavily invested in the "write once deploy anywhere" trend between 2009 - 2014. From phonegap (before it became cordova), to Adobe Air with it's bad performance and "native extensions", to Appcelerator Titanium that put a nodejs server in your phone and even had Windows Phone 7 support, to cordova, to…

I don't think it's "no! I want JavaScript everywhere!", it's that we're being told that we need to develop and maintain an identical, or near identical, app that runs on iOS, Android, and a host of browsers across a smattering of devices. If something could actually deliver on the promise of "write once, run anywhere" then it would reduce the redundant elements of my work many times over.

Re: What do you dislike about React Native?

#29

Post by SneakerXZ »

rolleiflex wrote: post #25
throwaway66666 wrote: post #19

I will probably be heavily downvoted but here goes nothing. I have not used React Native yet, but I followed and was heavily invested in the "write once deploy anywhere" trend between 2009 - 2014. From phonegap (before it became cordova), to Adobe Air with it's bad performance and "native extensions", to Appcelerator Titanium that put a nodejs server in your phone and even had Windows Phone 7 support, to cordova, to…

Everyone intrinsically understands that native is better, and I'm saying this as somebody who runs a 120k LoC Electron app ( https://getaether.net ) myself. I'm painfully aware that native is better, all day, every day. The problem is this: I'm a solo founder. I am both the engineer and designer (and PM). The alternative for me would be not to write a Mac app, a Windows app, and a Linux app separately, and have them…

But why Electron? There are other cross-platform solutions with great performance.

Re: What do you dislike about React Native?

#30

Post by nathan_f77 »

throwaway66666 wrote: post #19

I will probably be heavily downvoted but here goes nothing. I have not used React Native yet, but I followed and was heavily invested in the "write once deploy anywhere" trend between 2009 - 2014. From phonegap (before it became cordova), to Adobe Air with it's bad performance and "native extensions", to Appcelerator Titanium that put a nodejs server in your phone and even had Windows Phone 7 support, to cordova, to…

I agree with most of the things you've said. But here's the thing: Even if you are able to write native apps in Objective C, Swift, and Java, React Native still saves you an enormous amount of time. And you don't have to do everything in JavaScript.

I'm a web developer who got into native iOS development, and then I built an app with React Native. I was blown away by how much easier it is to build a cross-platform iOS and Android app. But I think it's also a much better choice even if you're just building an iOS app.

But you can't be afraid of writing your own native libraries in multiple languages, or fixing bugs in open source projects. I built a write-once-deploy-anywhere app that runs on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Windows Desktop, and the web (with react-native-web). It was a pretty magical experience and I would do it again. There were lots of challenges and bugs to figure out, but I enjoyed it much more than working in XCode with Swift and UIKit.

I'll definitely be using React Native for any mobile apps in the future, even if I'm just targeting a single platform (e.g. ARKit on iOS). I just love building the UI with React and managing state with Redux.

It could be a lot better, though. There's just not enough people working on it, and GitHub issues can go unresolved for months or years. And it hasn't been very easy to upgrade to newer versions. But on the whole, React Native is awesome.

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