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React Native Pros and Cons

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fugenx mobileapp
React Native Pros and Cons

When we first heard about React Native, a framework that enables mobile app development for multiple platforms, we were thrilled. One team, one codebase and the potential to scale an app for iOS and Android using a fracture of resources required in native development is a great promise. But how does it stack up against the reality?

. Faster to Build

The major selling point of React Native is the shorter development time. The framework provides numerous ready-to-apply components that can accelerate the process. React Native still lacks some solutions, so you would probably have to build them from scratch, but RN is based on JavaScript, which gives access to the largest package ecosystem in the world, npm. Having access to such an extensive base of packages, you can save much time, and it will only get better. As the RN community is growing and Facebook regularly introduces new updates, we may find ready components for most of the solutions we need one day.

We built the very same app with both React Native and Swift. The latter took as much as 33% more time to build and still was working only on iOS – with no Android version. Significant savings can come with developing for more than one platform. As RN lets you share a big part of a codebase between operating systems within a few hours, you can potentially save time and money.

2. One Framework, Multiple Platforms

React Native allows you to reuse the codebase (or just a part of it) between iOS and Android. In practice, full cross-platform development is possible to some extent, depending on how many native modules you use in your application. Some features will be available in npm packages, but others will need to be written from scratch. It will only get better, though. React Native community actively supports the framework, adding new tools to its open source.

Developing with JavaScript also provides an opportunity to share the codebase not only between mobile platforms but also React web applications. Active development of tools like React Native Web seems to point in this direction. This also allows the same developers to work both on web and mobile applications, as the technologies are very similar. Whereas the stability of such solutions still leaves a lot to be desired, the possibility of sharing non-UI dependent code might still bring reasonable benefits. Besides shortening the development time, it could help improve the consistency of your app’s business logic between all supported platforms.

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