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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: 0.374s | 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/

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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?
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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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dboreham ◴[17 Jan 25 14:59 UTC] No.42738170[source]▶
Not apples comparison imho. Flutter requires using a new fringe language and while it might be a very nice language it's a heavy lift in most businesses contexts to march off into a new language just to use a mobile framework.

So, the main reason for Expo (there are others) is: get to write in the language most developers already know.

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1. maeil ◴[19 Jan 25 12:43 UTC] No.42756505[source]▶
Fringe but incredibly similar to Typescript. I don't think there exist any other language that is not a direct dialect of Javascript that's as similar. I didn't find there to be any language barrier, especially now with LLMs who are perfect for answering one-off questions about the few diffefences. The tooling is better as well, which means even less of a barrier.