Five years of React Native at Shopify

> Our apps are blazing fast (<500ms screen loads)

I’m not sure I would consider 0.5 seconds to be blazing fast.

I wish the article went into detail on what these screens do and what a screen load means exactly.

That was my initial thought as well. Anyone know what native screen loads typically are? I’m sure it varies wildly between apps, but 500ms seems like it would be on the slower end of a “fast” app.

For typical apps, the four variables here are backend latency, network latency, client-side deserialization, and client GUI rendering. (Less commonly, apps which have complex client-side state will also spend time reconciling server and client state.)

Keeping UI rendering under 16ms is the gold standard for native apps. That leaves only deserialization as the other target which the mobile developer can optimize. However, the typical solution there involves convincing the backend to ship a different format (i.e. switching from JSON to binary PList or to SQLite DB file).