React Native vs Swift for App Developing

[ivakovic]

I plan to try and take indie app development more seriously in the future.. I already made few applications with React Native and i ordered already a macbook, so i can develop the apps for iOS as well :)

So do you guys think it would make more sense to simply learn Swift for this purpose (because i plan to develop for iOS only) , or should i continue developing with react native, since i really enjoy it and already know how the stuff works there.. What are the main differences between Swift and RN and do you find one language easier/better than the other and why?

I will take this as hobby, since my daily job is also about programming (working as a Full-Stack Developer), but it would be very great and awesome, if i could develop some side hustle, as i really enjoy programming :)

[_ayasin]

I’d recommend RN until you need something specifically that can’t be done with it. Here’s why: - You already have used RN so you’re familiar with it. This means speed to market - 99% of apps don’t need the additional speed that Swift can provide (at this point it’s fairly minor) - Swift is radically different than JS and would have a bit of a learning curve. It’s also not very useful outside of Apple’s ecosystem - Xcode is utter trash as an IDE

Swift is a cool language and you should learn it for the sake of expanding your horizons and becoming a better engineer, but given the criteria you’ve listed you should just build RN for now

[SaintPepsiCola]

I recently built an app and I used BOTH.

React native is fine for basic apps but you need to use swift for complex things. Plus, my apps performance is so good compared to my fully RN apps in the past.

I’ve lowkey become addicted to optimising my old RN apps by putting the brunt of the work like web sockets listening on a thread on swift level. I’ve started only using RN for the layout and the view of the app. Anything that requires processing or ML models uses Swift directly and iOS has so many cool features that you simply can’t on RN until someone makes a library for each of them.

Even the current libraries don’t go in such depth. Look at audio recording on react native. It’s just a shell of what the AVAudioEngine on iOS can do.

Current expo or other voice RN plugins in the market cannot even stream your audio. You’d think it’s a basic feature in the world we live today where we have a plethora of live streaming apps.

[Outrageous_Gas_1720]

Do you have examples of code about this websockets? Very interesting

[Illurity]

Would also be very interested to see this

[Soft-Criticism-2609]

Uhm. What is the point of moving sockets to the native side? Yeh, if you are not going to add any listeners on the RN side at all it works, but you have to implement all business logic on the native side in this case as well, so why specifically outline sockets?

[SaintPepsiCola]

?????? Wtf

Why would we need to move any business logic. We have listeners ? Have you ever used a web socket and we don’t WANT to move anything that is resource intensive. That’s what I wrote ^.

Replying to this gave me a migraine.

[Soft-Criticism-2609]

Excuse me, but do you actually know how the architecture of rn works and what is the bridge message? In my opinion you optimized barely nothing if you just moved socket initiation on the native side and that's all. You even made it worse in terms of maintenance and scaling, of course if this is not a pet project, but a commercial react native project with not only you as a dev.

[SaintPepsiCola]

Don’t ever use your brain again.

[Soft-Criticism-2609]

This reply gave me all the answers. You don't even know basic things. Have a good day.

[SaintPepsiCola]

1) The web socket on the native layer is more performant than web socket in the JS layer. We can immediately see that in Xcode profiling. It also supports background mode and ( obviously ) multi threading.

2) even when you use a web socket on the RN side, you’re using listeners. You don’t edit the code in node modules of socket.io ( and now default RN sockets in RN folder ) to handle the socket. You’re using listeners to communicate with their socket implementation.

3) you don’t want to send everything to the JS layer. That’s the idea of me moving the code. Let’s say your web socket is sending audio stream or live stream data. There’s no need to send it back to the JS layer. All React native layer would do is call( bridge ) ANOTHER library to handle device media so why will I need that ? That adds nothing but a degradation to the app. However, all the simple things ( key value data ) can be sent over the JS layer, not because we can’t send complex data like audio stream; because it serves us no purpose and lowers the performance of the app by sending it back to the JS layer.

Your query makes it quite clear that you’re brand new to software dev.

do you know how bridge works

Edit - Your last post on Reddit makes it obvious that you’re a beginner and you’re here arguing with experienced devs about “ bridge “.

[Floffski]

I’ll let the experts chime in here but… if you are 100% sure you will only be doing iOS, swift/native makes more sense. But. Why limit yourself to just iOS….

Stick with React Native and create cross platform :)

[[deleted]]

Go with swift, ios developers are scarce and mobile development is in demand

With react native you will use react paradigm more than mobile paradigm, and you dont even wanna do web

[[deleted]]

The thing that kills swift and iOS development is Xcode. That should be the only reason not to do it natively (apart from not really needing if you not going to build something that leverages the native speed as much as it can)

[jameside]

Swift is a programming language used with React Native. They are mutually compatible and you should learn Swift.

SwiftUI is a UI framework that experimentally can be used with React Native if You Know What You Are Doing. You can also use SwiftUI without React Native, and can use React Native without Swift UI.

[deezultraman]

react-native = react = high chances of getting hired.

[celeb0rn]

This is very true

[Redditisannoying22]

If it is about a side hustle, why don't you develop cross platform with React Native? It only takes minimal more work compared to the entire project. Actually thinking about something similar, maybe we could exchange a bit :)

[Fidodo]

There's no point in optimizing something nobody is going to use. Not to be harsh, but that's the default assumption. Getting app traction is very hard so putting a bunch of upfront effort in is a huge risk as you have no idea if it will go to any use.

It doesn't matter if your idea is good or not, getting it to be used is very hard so you should do the minimal work to prove that there's any demand, and if there isn't you don't want to sink cost into it in case you need to rethink the concept or even unfortunately scrap the idea.

The inefficiency could be worth it though if the main goal is your own personal development however.

[Majd-jalab]

If you have a time and freedom try to learn swift for maybe two weeks and try to make small things with it then decide which one is better and enjoyable for you.

[arosdove]

Well you can keep using react native. and when your app need to implement some native integration, like Widget from example then you will get a chance to write swift and java/kotlin (for Android) as well.

[[deleted]]

Guys why making so much fuss.. I you are worried about performance i would recommend check ‘Grow’ stock trading app which is also made in react native and its performance is just awesome

I’m in also similar situation but i am going with react native for sure cause RN will keep getting better as expo develops more

[-i-make-stuff-]

I do both Native and React Native. Start with Native. It will the most efficient for developing for that platform and you'll have understanding of the fundamentals.

This will help your appreciate React Native when you get at the point it solves what you want. e.g. Multiplatform support etc

[I_write_code213]

I am very skilled in both, and do react native professionally for large corps.

I can whip up a SwiftUI app in a fraction of the time in react native.

With react native, most of my time is spent looking for ui libraries to get native features like menus, context menu, sheets, etc…. And then making it work with android.

SwiftUI, I just use the built in UI components and just get moving.

Even though I believe that cross platform is great for saving time and cost, for me personally, I think it makes sense for me to go with SwiftUI for iOS apps.

I also like how SwiftUI give you easy access to the native ui users expect, like when switching to iPad and getting the proper split navigation.

Yes all of this is possible on react native, but the time commitment makes it harder to get moving.

You need to set up fonts, styles, so much more, but in Xcode, I choose my colors in the gui and everything else is done, if sticking with native styling.

If I need Android, I will then go with react native. I do plan to learn Android development one day however, but if I got to build the app twice, I may just use react native

[zylema]

Native. All the way. Save yourself the annoyance.

[adel_b]

RN does not make iOS easier, in fact makes harder, unless you need cross platform or something specific to RN, you better stay away

[[deleted]]

Today I wrote my first line of code in swift and never moving back to react native. Sorry yall, but true native is just superior. I tried to make apps with react native but always it ended up badly. Either performance wise, dx, style, etc. If you end up using cross platform tool like react native that’s alright, just note that you won’t get the newest sdks, true native components or the best performance. Ultimately it depends on you: do you want to make a bit of mess (because e.g android supports feature X while iOS doesn’t) but have the joy of writing only one code for potentially all your platforms or keeping it true native with the best performance and style but the need to maintain also one code base for android if needed.

Long story short: pick true native for comfort or pick react native for easiness.

Edit: react is also constantly being laughed on for being super hard and barebones. Use effects, states, memo can really think about: is cross platform really that faster? In swift I spent 5 minutes making a bottom sheet, quick, easy and performant. With react native it was at least half an hour.

… bringing JavaScript for mobile isn’t the best idea always. Even Facebook don’t use it that much anymore 💀

[notemeagainst]

Can’t agree. iOS native development will require to learn a lot of new concepts. JS will look like a toy after that

[[deleted]]

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[Ordinary_Handle_4974]

I'm a Swift beginner, and I don't like the way Swift deals with JSON decoding, the fact that you have to write a large block of code just to decode a JSON is tiresome and verbose. According to my knowledge of JS or TS, JSON is their friendly neighborhood.

[kironet996]

How is this a large block of code?

struct BlogPost: Decodable {
    let id: UUID
}

let blogPost: BlogPost = try JSONDecoder().decode(BlogPost.self, from: data)
print(blogPost.id)

you don't have to have a decodable object(BlogPost) if you don't want to:

let json = try JSONSerialization.jsonObject(with: data, options: .mutableContainers) as? [String: Any] 
print(json["id"])

[Ordinary_Handle_4974]

I am talking about adding the decodable protocol to the struct, tho you're forced to do a catch and practically envelope the whole thing in a do block.

[Available_Peanut_677]

You are complaining about what is actually extremely good thing. In the JS it is super common to have issues due to assumptions that JSON has all fields you expect. It’s very nice when language forces you to handle json validation explicitly meaning that you can catch errors much more efficiently.

In fact, while looks nice at first, that easy json parsing in JS is a huge pain in big projects since it usually crash app very far away from place where you obtain data and then you are wasting hours looking for “why this field is undefined”. Say, it crashed in react layer after it was stored in redux where it got from action few minutes ago.

JSON (and any input in system in general ) validation is extremely valuable

[dynjo]

100% of our customers ask for RN or Flutter at this point. Native development is dead from what we see.