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Five years of React Native at Shopify

(shopify.engineering)
324 points onnnon | 1 comments | 13 Jan 25 22:08 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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prophesi ◴[16 Jan 25 21:08 UTC] No.42730929[source]▶
I'm surprised that there was no mention of Expo. In the past, I would say bare-metal is better than Expo-managed React Native projects because of the limitations when it came to native modules. Fast forward to today, and anything you can do in a bare metal RN app can be done with Expo.

The biggest game-changer recently is Expo's Continuous Native Generation[0]. You can configure all of your native modules and ios/android files with a simple config file (which has its limits, whereby you'll need to write an Expo Config Plugin[1]). You will no longer commit the ios/android native code to your repository, and instead let it be procedurally built.

This resolved a lot of environment issues developers would often run into, and greatly simplified onboarding new devs. You can build your iOS/Android apps through the CI with ease. And you'll no longer be afraid of upgrading React Native, as Expo will handle all of the breaking changes in the native code for you.

My guess is that Shopify started with bare metal React Native apps (which I would have done the same 5 years ago), and now migrating back to Expo-managed projects is nontrivial. At my work we only manage one app, and it was well worth migrating back.

[0] https://docs.expo.dev/workflow/continuous-native-generation/

[1] https://docs.expo.dev/config-plugins/introduction/

replies(1): >>42732798 #
gunian ◴[17 Jan 25 00:44 UTC] No.42732798[source]▶
What are your thoughts on Flutter vs Expo vs React Native for someone that wants to build a native app for fun?
replies(4): >>42732845 #>>42733920 #>>42736576 #>>42737723 #
reddalo ◴[17 Jan 25 03:58 UTC] No.42733920[source]▶
> Expo vs React Native

Expo is React Native with some nice things sprinkled on top. I'd go with Expo.

replies(1): >>42735370 #
gunian ◴[17 Jan 25 08:46 UTC] No.42735370[source]▶
why Expo over Flutter? do React Native and Expo provide better abstractions over the Java/ObjC native APIs? again I've never done native dev just curious sorry if this isnt HN worthy comment
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1. oakesm9 ◴[17 Jan 25 11:29 UTC] No.42736440{4}[source]▶
The tooling for Flutter is better, but Expo brings React Native much closer.

I fend that React Native app "feel" more native because they're actually using native components, but controlled via a JS runtime. Flutter on the other hand mostly renders to a canvas and re-implements native controls (although it can also wrap native components like RN does).

This leads to there being less of an "uncanny valley" in React Native apps compared to flutter. It also means that all the little details from the system (the text selecting and editing interactions in text inputs being a major one) are idential to native apps when using React Native, because it IS the native component.

The downside to this is that you need to consider platform differences more with React Native, which is one of the things which leads to developers without mobile experience having issues with it.

As the article says, you get the most out of React Native if you're a mobile developer, or at least have someone on the team who is. You can't abstract away all the details of a mobile platform without some tradeoffs.