React Native Development In A Nutshell
For a number of years now, React Native has reportedly been some sort of hot topic in the entire mobile development world. It’s no wonder why it took the whole tech world by storm by offering a brand new way for developers to develop mobile apps directly for both Android and iOS simultaneously.
React Native, the all-in-one framework
Global Popularity. React Native has reportedly been successfully adopted by a lot of different businesses around the world. These include tech giants like Facebook, Microsoft, and even Uber! Of course, it’s not just limited to that. There are also a lot of different companies reportedly using the framework across a long list of industries.
Android & iOS Capacities. However, before users can decide to dip and go all-in with the said React Native, it is still very crucial to understand exactly how it works and if it indeed is a good fit for the project being planned. React Native, otherwise known as RN, is said to be a popular JavaScript-based mobile app framework that would allow its developers to be able to build some natively-rendered mobile apps for both Android and iOS. The said framework would let its users create an application for different platforms using the exact same codebase!
Top Solutions. React Native was initially released by Facebook as some sort of open-source project back in 2015. In only a couple of years, it then became one of the top solutions that is used for mobile app development. The react native development is reportedly used in order to power a number of the world’s leading mobile apps. These include other apps like Facebook, Instagram, and Skype.
Why is React Native so successful?
Android & iOS apps. Firstly, aside from the React Native testing tools or the React Native automated testing tools that allow the user to check for flaws and easily fix them, through React Native, companies can easily create code just once and then proceed to use it in order to power both their Android and iOS apps! This means the company will be able to save a huge amount of resources in both time and effort.
Based on React. Secondly, React Native was actually built based on React which is a JavaScript library that was widely popular when the whole mobile framework was released. This means that adapting to the framework technically won’t be too hard.
Solution to Mistakes. Thirdly, the React Native framework empowered the frontend developers, who, in the past, could only work along with web-based technologies in order to create robust, production-ready apps for the said mobile platforms. The reason that React Native is what it is today is interesting because it was actually developed in response to a number of big tech mistakes!
React Native history
When Facebook had first decided to make its own service available on the mobile device, instead of actually building out a particular native app like a lot of different tech players used to do, they then decided to run along with a mobile webpage that is based on HTML5. However, the solution sadly didn’t really stand a chance as it left a lot of room for UI and performance improvements. Back in 2012, Mark Zuckerberg actually admitted that the largest mistake that they made was to bet too much on HTML instead of native.
In 2013, however, Jordan Walke, a Facebook developer, had suddenly made a huge groundbreaking discovery. He actually found a method of being able to generate UI elements for the iOS apps using JavaScript! This then spanked fire and a special Hackathon was even organized in order to further the discovery of just how much mobile development could actually be done using the JavaScript solutions.
This is essentially how React Native first came to be. Although initially developed specifically for iOS, Facebook then had a quick follow-up with Android support before actually making the framework public back in 2015. Just a report three years later, React Native was then already the second largest project over on GitHub due to the number of contributors. Back in 2019, it actually stood strong in sixth place with a whopping 9,100 contributors!
What is the difference between React and React Native?
Frontend development. Simplifying everything, React Native is basically not the “newer” version of React, although it is reported that React Native still does use it. React, sometimes known as ReactJS, is actually a JavaScript library that is used for being able to build the very frontend of a website. Much similar to React Native, it was also actually developed by the engineering team of Facebook.
Different UI Components. Meanwhile, the React Native, which is reportedly powered by React, allows its developers to use a set of different UI components in order to quickly compile as well as launch Android and iOS apps. Both React Native and React are technically using a mixture of JavaScript as well as a special markup language known as JSX.
Syntax. The syntax, however, used to render certain elements in the JSX components still differ between both React Native and React. In addition, React actually uses some CSS and HTML while React Native, on the other hand, still allows the use of certain native mobile user interface elements.
Purpose. In the end, while the popular two frameworks are technically still related to each other, they are still used for seemingly different purposes. Knowledge of React won’t really be enough for both Android and iOS mobile app development.
React Native testing tools. Another great thing about React Native is that it has great React Native testing tools that help with React Native automated testing in order to make the development process smoother ground up. In the end, Facebook really did a good job at simplifying the whole process through React Native and what it is capable of doing.
