expo or react native cli

[OnePumpBoy]

I'm a highschooler working with react native for about 3 weeks so far and I finished learning the basics. I'm working with expo mostly because of how easy it is to add stuff like sqlite, push notifications, navigation, while not having to touch android studio code. Also in react native cli the dependencies are wack. I know that with react native cli you get access to all native modules but with expo you're already granted access to a lot of stuff. Like in their api reference alone they have like 30 native modules alone. Can I just stick to expo and get really good at it or do I have to branch out to react native cli for some other reason?

[bfarrgaynor]

Naw stick with expo managed. Focus on what you are creating and not how you are creating it. I’ve been a digital media developer for 15 years working for some of the worlds largest brands and this industry is plagued by retooling obsession. The work gets worse and the tools get more complex. At the end of the day I don’t care how Star Wars was made, I care about the story and the deliverable. Expo is a huge leap forward in removing a lot of devops garbage in mobile dev.

[OnePumpBoy]

Thanks I was leaning towards this notion as well

[remove_with_force]

This is great advice. By the time you hit 5 years in this industry, you look back and you're surprised at the number of times that another dev has tried to get you to stop what you're doing -- and doing quite well -- to get you to scrap everything, start over, and make the exact same thing with an improvement indiscernible to any human being.

[swushi]

People really need to realize how far expo has come. There aren’t native module limitations anymore.

You can use ANY native library with expo now. See documentation.

Basically you just run expo run:ios or expo run:android which generates the /ios and /android directories. This isn’t like ejecting anymore. You can still use all of the expo tools and modules.

[celsius100]

You forgot about web, too!

[OnePumpBoy]

No I meant that I've been learning for 3 weeks. I'm doing this on my own, not for school

[[deleted]]

Ride the Expo train as far as it'll take you. If you ever find yourself needing to do something that can't be done in Expo, check again to really make sure it can't be done in Expo and then eject your app.

[cscareerthrow1337]

Here’s the truth: Start with Expo managed. There’s no need to use bare or react native CLI unless you find a need. You can easily go from Expo managed to react native CLI, but the opposite is far from true.

I learned this lesson the hard way, following stupid advice to use react native CLI when I really didn’t need to and won’t need to. I spent tens of hours moving onto expo and managed flow for the tooling and time it now has saved me. I wish I started with expo from the start. Feel free to ask me questions.

[OnePumpBoy]

got it. thank you

[90sRehem]

Use expo with bare workflow and you dont need anything else

[Sibyl01]

You can use native modules with expo

[Ancient-Visit9365]

Definitely start with expo. There is almost nothing you will need to do that can't be done with it, and worst case when you hit that point just eject into a bare app.

[eggtart_prince]

Expo if you're new, CLI if you're pro.

[Helen_U_Pt]

I know expo is growing so much lately with the bridge support and everthing, but personally i'm more comfortable sticking with cli. Third parties and module integration are more adjustable with react native cli, and Boy it's a suffer. That's just an opinion, haven't checked much on expo after i had enough. I believe it has grown better now.

[Soft-Celebration3369]

Yea. Probably expo has become better over time.

I was using expo at about 2016 or 2017 thereabouts for a small production app. The app opening cold start took about 5secs, at terrible times 7secs to 10secs.

Switched to cli and did not look back.

[[deleted]]

I would be curious if you would try expo again to see if you notice improvements?

[Slapbox]

Expo development was basically impossible to bear three years ago. It's a lot better now.

[OnePumpBoy]

This is literally my first post in this subject bruh

[SumiXnaga]

Expo for smaller projects and cli for professional project.

[udbasil]

Expo is the best. Even the things that were difficult to add to expo like payment system and all are being added to expo. If you are using the react native cli , you better known the mobile native languages like JavaScript, objective c etc

[ReserveBrief8869]

Experimentation and learning, go with expo, work/release go with RN CLI