React Native is one of the most popular technologies today. It has revolutionized mobile development. In this post, we will look at its main features and advantages over current competitors.
Until recently, there were two completely different approaches to developing applications and the possibility of publishing them in official stores:
- Development on native platforms (Android-Java, Ios-Objective-C/Swift);
- Development on a web platform embedded in a web view or web application (Cordova, Ionic, …).
Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages and depending on the project, it may be more beneficial to use one or the other.
React Native is a great helper that will help you realize any of your projects. If you need help, then you can hire react native developers. Thus, professionals will take over the workflow.
Advantages and disadvantages of React Native
Native apps look professional and work well, but they require a deep understanding of each platform and are prone to a lot of bugs. Another aspect to consider is that when developing native code, you get the feeling of repeating work over and over again on every platform.
Web application development simplifies programming by using the same common platform, but in many cases, its appearance and performance are not as smooth as expected.
Also be aware that these apps will have very limited access to hardware and native APIs (GPS, push notifications…). Also, these systems usually have rather poor development and debugging environments compared to native ones (XCode and Android Studio).
Development in React Native
One might wonder: is it possible to develop an application with native performance, but with the benefits of web development? This can be done with React Native and its hybrid approach: rapid development and natural user experience.
Facebook developers have been betting very heavily on their ReactJS and React Native technologies in recent years. React works with Node and NPM, which means that the platform is based on pure JavaScript. You can apply your JavaScript and React knowledge to create an iOS and Android app by reusing the same code. This gives us the advantage of having the entire JavaScript ecosystem at our fingertips, which is constantly growing and saving programmers a lot of work.
React adapts very well to the current ECMAScript JavaScript standard, although it is ES5 compliant. This new standard brings great news: classes, template strings, module imports, classes, arrow functions, etc.
An important aspect is that React Native has a fairly short learning curve, and if a developer also knows React, they can start development almost from the first minute. Also, when developing an application in React Native, most of the code we write is the same for Android and iOS versions. We only need to worry about business logic and layout once.
To debug our code, we have a complete development environment: React developer tools, React Native Debugger, and Redux developer tools that integrate perfectly with the Chrome Dev Console. These tools ensure that developers have a good experience while developing.
Therefore, if you are looking for a quality cross-platform framework that helps you create applications, then you can choose React Native. If you want to learn more about this platform, you need to read more.