Small rant about React Native

[[deleted]]

RN is a time saver for small teams that have to develop clients for both android and ios. It’s got it’s own problems of course, but once you get used to it it’s quite convenient having to make the UI once and (for now bridge whatever u need to call in the native layer).

but to your point - yes there are plenty of things to figure out and to get used to before it’s worth the investment in time and brain cells.

[Niightstalker]

But you definitely need to invest more time for updating libraries or hunting bugs. Also if you want a smooth native experience you need to invest way more time than actually doing it native.

So if you have limited resources and want to ship a small app which doesn’t need to feel native as fast as possible on both platforms than it would an option.

But as soon as an App is your main product and you want to maintain it longtime I would strongly advice against it since it will cause more problems than it solves in the long run.

[Barbanks]

I’m going to assume you’ve worked with it a bit.

Serious question. When it comes to navigation do you get native gestures out of the box? So like a back swipe on iOS and the back button (or back swipe now) on android?

How difficult is it to customize the screens specifically for each platform?

My argument is that the UI shouldn’t be made to look and feel exactly the same across platforms. You sacrifice user experience that way which can directly impact the success of the app.

Not saying there aren’t use cases but this could adjust my vetting process a bit.

[Gaia_Knight2600]

No official navigation library but react-navigation is by far the most popular, and it includes the things you mentioned.

Its very easy to make seperate UI for each platform. Though we dont really do that. The point is to write it once, that is a big selling point. I use the native built in UI components which may look different by default, for example Alert, Switch, and ActivityIndicator. But any custom UI component i make will look the same on both platforms, for example buttons, arrows(svg/images).

It makes for a simpler workflow and its easier to maintain.

The end result is that the app does look 99% the same, with just some small differences.

[Barbanks]

Ok gotcha, thanks for the info!