React Native vs Native Apps on Mobile
Today I had a discussion with a Developer on Linkedin about use of react native in Mobile Apps. I asked him to enlist a few Apps that are built using React native so that I can compare the performance viz a viz native Apps. The reason for request was that I have never seen a single App built using JS which comes even close to the native Apps.
The Developer rattled off few usual names like Facebook, Instagram, AirBnB etc. Not convinced, I decided to dig further. When I visited the Facebook Engineering site, I found quite a few projects in native Objective C/Swift. I found an article "React native - a year in review" (https://code.facebook.com/posts/597378980427792/react-native-a-year-in-review/). It has a section on "React Native at Facebook", where it says "The Facebook Groups app is a hybrid app where the feed is powered by React Native.". So Facebook app is essentially a Hybrid app that uses react Native to render the feed. However the other parts of app like navigation etc are built using platform specific programming languages.
Then I dug into Airbnb. I came across an article which contained an interview of Airbnb Engineer (http://devnacho.com/2016/03/20/how-airbnb-uses-react/). The questions talked about how Airbnb uses React and virtues of react. However the last question was very confusing-
Do you use, or plan to use React Native?
“We are currently exploring using React Native for some features on our main App. We have used it in other places, but never on anything public.”
So it means they are not using react in their main App.
I also came across a twitter post (https://twitter.com/spikebrehm/status/799338174979842050?lang=en) -
Today we launched the new @Airbnb Trips Platform. It’s 90+% written in #reactnative! Very exciting times. https://www.airbnb.com/new
But its a web app!! Not Mobile App.
So I am convinced (and even the Developer with whom I was having discussion with) that React native is useful in parts but still not good enough to build an entire App. Expecting a native app experience from react or any other JS framework is foolish. Moreover in complex apps you always get stuck with some issue for which there is no solution and there is no one experienced enough to help you out. So you end up regretting your choice of the framework.
Check out the Facebook F8 app, which is built entirely in React and judge for yourself.
With AR/VR/ML/AI/CV becoming mainstream on Mobile and the device manufacturer trying to push the limit by using GPUs and other hardware accelerators to speed up these operations on Mobile, I feel that the native Apss will take a leap which will never be matched by the Javascript frameworks!
He: "dude! Facebook, instagram, airbnb (drops mic)"
Me: (After all the above reasoning) "Picks and hands over the mic back to him" :)