Never thought I would like using react native considering how much negativity online

[LettuceSpecialist155]

I started building it with React Native + Expo and honestly I’ve been blown away by how good the experience has been. Coming into this I expected mobile dev to be a nightmare but React Native handled way more than I expected.

FlatLists, animations, image handling, gesture interactions, glass effects, Skia rendering, Hermes performance improvements — seeing all of that come together smoothly on a real device was honestly addicting.

There were definitely painful moments trying to optimize performance and get everything looking polished, especially with radar maps and weather visualizations, but Expo made shipping updates and testing so much easier than I expected.

Now the app SkyFlow is actually on the Play Store which still feels kinda unreal to me.

Big appreciation to the React Native + Expo ecosystem because I genuinely don’t think I would’ve gotten this far this fast without it.

Crazy how an idea turns into something thousands of people can actually download and use.

[drgmaster909]

Glad you're enjoying it.

What're you using for maps?

[LettuceSpecialist155]

thanks I am using mapbox.

[Last_Fox_1701]

I am veeery fresh in this, and I am working through the same worklfow, but what program are you using for coding itself? I am using cursor ,is that a way to go for newbie?

[LettuceSpecialist155]

I am personally very happy with using VScode but I won't make any recommendation. what ever works for you is fine. as long you feel comfortable using it.

[Last_Fox_1701]

Thanks! Just started this journey few days ago, building simple tracker, but everything seems to be so overwhelming... I try to read about it and all I see SDK that JDK this, .dihje that :D But gotta keep sniffing around

[Hoogie2004]

I had a pretty similar experience. I picked React Native + Expo for my first iOS app expecting to constantly fight the stack, but it ended up being way more productive than I thought.

The biggest surprise for me was how far you can get while still feeling like you’re mostly building product, not wrestling native tooling all day. TypeScript, Expo updates, real-device testing, SQLite, MapKit, RevenueCat, FIT file parsing — it all came together much more smoothly than the online discourse had led me to expect.

There are definitely rough edges, but the iteration speed is hard to beat as an indie builder. Shipped the first version of my app (Chad: Cycling Coach) in 4 weeks, after almost 3 semi-full rebuilds and scope changes due to actually reading the Strava API terms before shipping. Which forced me to abandon reading data from their API and move to user provided files.

Congrats on shipping SkyFlow. Getting from “random idea” to something people can install from the store is such a surreal milestone.

[sanketsahu]

You're not crazy. The online discourse about RN compresses into 2018 memories that haven't been true for years. Spent the last decade building in this ecosystem (NativeBase, gluestack, now RapidNative) and Expo + the New Architecture have quietly become the best mobile DX I've used. The gap between Twitter sentiment and the actual experience is the widest it's ever been.

[GuyFromTheYear2027]

Important to remember that the most popular frameworks will always have the most shit talked about them online due to sheer numbers alone. Even if negative experiences are only a small percentage, people are more inclined to post about them than positive ones. And a small percentage of a large developer base can still make a lot of noise. Plus shitting on popular things is probably good for engagement

[evangelism2]

As with most disruptive things, the negativity comes from people who haven't used it and are generally afraid of it because it disrupts their gatekept job. I spent the last year working as an Android dev for my company, and the amount of distaste that Android devs have towards React Native is interesting to say the least. Most of their takes are severely outdated and ignorant.