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WalmartLabs opensources its tool for bringing React Native to mobile apps

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Re: WalmartLabs opensources its tool for bringing React Native to mobile apps

#41
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's this assumption that "same experience on all platforms" (aka "branding") is desirable to "native experience on all platforms". Facebook wants facebook to feel like facebook whether you're on an iPhone or an Android or your PC. Same with Chrome - it eschews native platform UI on all devices in favor of looking the same everywhere. Good UI - by definition - doesn't get in your way. But "good UI" may not be "good m…

I use OS X (laptop), Windows (VM), Android (phone), and iOS (iPad). It's not at all unusual for me to have apps installed on at least three of those platforms, and I really appreciate it when the UI is the same across platforms.

Do you think you represent 99% of the population?

Re: WalmartLabs opensources its tool for bringing React Native to mobile apps

#42
post #39

it's interesting to see the react-native detractors in this thread vs an Ask HN thread we had about react-native a couple of weeks ago. I wonder how many people could really determine an app's usage of RN in a blind taste test. could the disdain for js the language and bad memories of wrapped webviews be bleeding over? in our experience RN has offered a ton of leverage for a small team, and js makes a fine target to…

From the testing we've done internally, not much difference between React Native, Xamarin, Native and Cordova. Was it scientific? Nope. But most couldn't tell.

Re: WalmartLabs opensources its tool for bringing React Native to mobile apps

#43
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely agree, I avoid react / JavaScript ‘apps’ at all cost, they perform poorly, use excessive resources and seem to discourage an engineering mindset when writing code.

Out of curiousity, how are you able to detect React Native apps so you can avoid them? Facebook introduced React Native to their main app months before anyone noticed. Airbnb also was using it for a while before they publicly announced the fact.

Yeah it's pretty easy to tell, even if they've been modified to not look like a browser frame if you notice poor performance or increased memory usage you just have a look in activity monitor or ps and you'll quickly see the javascript web workers etc...

Re: WalmartLabs opensources its tool for bringing React Native to mobile apps

#44
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiousity, how are you able to detect React Native apps so you can avoid them? Facebook introduced React Native to their main app months before anyone noticed. Airbnb also was using it for a while before they publicly announced the fact.

Yeah it's pretty easy to tell, even if they've been modified to not look like a browser frame if you notice poor performance or increased memory usage you just have a look in activity monitor or ps and you'll quickly see the javascript web workers etc...

It sounds like you're talking about electron-style desktop apps, not React Native? They're quite different in architecture and performance.

Re: WalmartLabs opensources its tool for bringing React Native to mobile apps

#45
post #4

Why a company the size of Walmart does this cross platform crap is beyond me. Do they not have the resources to actually write real native apps in actual Swift? Why is it desirable to code to the the worst common denominators for devices? Cross platform is just lazy. And React “Native” is inferior to actual native.

Absolutely agree, I avoid react / JavaScript ‘apps’ at all cost, they perform poorly, use excessive resources and seem to discourage an engineering mindset when writing code.

how about flutter or is it just a dream at this point?

Re: WalmartLabs opensources its tool for bringing React Native to mobile apps

#46
post #39

it's interesting to see the react-native detractors in this thread vs an Ask HN thread we had about react-native a couple of weeks ago. I wonder how many people could really determine an app's usage of RN in a blind taste test. could the disdain for js the language and bad memories of wrapped webviews be bleeding over? in our experience RN has offered a ton of leverage for a small team, and js makes a fine target to…

We are in the process of rebuilding our app in react native. As a test, we created a portion of it in react native and did a side by side.

Our app is your basic slide out navigation with pages and forms and some animation. There is literally no detectable difference.

The only thing that I am still not sure of is performance on older devices. But on iPhone 6 and Galaxy S7... I wish we had started with react native from the beginning.

Re: WalmartLabs opensources its tool for bringing React Native to mobile apps

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Ultimately the declarative way of writing apps is objectively better and more predictable than the old mutable way :) how has this anything to do with RN ? You can write declarative codebases in swift or kotlin, no need for RN to achieve this.

I never coded native apps so forget my ignorance but how would you build an UI declaratively with swift? The turorial shows very imperative/mutative code indeed: @IBAction func setDefaultLabelText(_ sender: UIButton) { mealNameLabel.text = "Default Text" }

No need to apologize for asking an honest question :)

By combining a good databinding framework and reactive extension

so Bond & RxSwift or DataBinding (from google) & RxJava (or RxKotlin if/when it becomes a thing).

Of course, behind the scenes, this accesses the platform widgets in an imperative way (but that's also what RN has to do when it manipulates the same widgets). What matters is the API surface you interact with.

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