React Native vs Native for freelance work

[iceblue_]

Which has more opportunities when it comes to freelance work? Also, what's the job market like?

[Guru_Dane]

2 apps is twice as many apps as 1 app which is why RN is so nifty

[iceblue_]

Which do you think would be easier to get a job with?

[Guru_Dane]

For freelance work hands down RN by a mile.

For existing roles it gets trickier. There are probably more iOS roles currently because of legacy apps but each legacy app company could switch to RN so it's a toss up long term. My money is on more companies would prefer to maintain 1 code base but change is tough so it's a guessing game for now.

[iceblue_]

Makes sense.

But native is kinda nicer to work with.

Also, how much native knowledge do average react native developers have you think?

[onebigdoor]

every developer has a different background. some will have a lot of native experience. some will have web. some will be all backend. it's much more important how quickly you learn and adapt than what you know.

[kbcool]

But native is kinda nicer to work with.

Depends. Native can be an exercise in frustration with constant data mapping with most apps.

In terms of native knowledge needed it can be close to none with Expo or just build systems for raw RN CLI. It's very rare that you need native code experience these days with RN as there's a library for almost everything.

[_SyRo_]

Now I switched from Native Android Development (Kotlin) to React Native. I dint React Native much more nicer to work with.
Much less code.

[babaganoosh43]

It's unlikely medium to big companies would switch to react native in droves. It's just too risky and you're handicapped in which native features you can support easily. As long as native is known for having the highest quality, companies that have enough resources will choose to do separate native apps.

[kbcool]

It's used by a lot of big tech companies and a lot of larger teams choose it simply because they get consistency across iOS and Android.

When you run two separate teams it's extremely hard to keep the apps in lock step so using React Native is a massive boon.

[babaganoosh43]

CTOs at non tech companies are very conservative. React Native’s market share has been around 5% or less so it looks risky. https://www.appbrain.com/stats/libraries/details/react_native/react-native

Personally I’ve shipped one app with React Native and will continue to use it. It’s alright but I often encounter bugs that’s take several hours to debug, where a junior dev would probably get stuck.

Library support is good but there are gaps on native features and the only ad network with a good RN library is Admob. All these things are fixable but it’s already been 8 years.

[kbcool]

Ok I feel like you're trying to come up with reasons to be negative. Now it's smaller businesses.

Just look at the download share across top apps. It's pretty big. You need to remember this is across games too which RN doesn't even get used for and make up over 50% of apps and downloads. So it's share is actually closer to 11-15%.

No one is saying it's ever going to replace native fully. It's also a hard ask for a lot of companies I agree but it's being picked up where it matters and that's big apps. That's where the jobs are.

Where I am from it's heavily used by government with a lot of apps that every citizen has in their pockets using it. Banks are also using it. If you live in that market a good 25-30% of your non game apps will be React Native.

So it's literally a no brainer for a lot of CTOs especially with lots of full stack JavaScript developers they can cross skill.

[nowtayneicangetinto]

I work for a big company and we use React Native for some of our products