Was React Native a good idea?

About this Video

• Video Title: Was React Native a good idea?
• Channel: Theo - t3․gg
• Speakers: Theo (presumably)
• Duration: 00:43:24

Introduction

This video explores the long-term success of React Native, focusing on Shopify's five-year experience with the framework. The video analyzes the reasons behind Shopify's adoption, the challenges encountered, and the ultimate benefits achieved, contrasting this experience with Airbnb's reported struggles.

Key Takeaways

• Shopify's successful React Native adoption: Shopify transitioned all its apps to React Native over five years, achieving significant productivity gains and improved app performance (sub 500-millisecond screen loads and 99.9% crash-free sessions).
• Three main reasons for Shopify's adoption: Write-once, run-everywhere functionality; talent portability across iOS, Android, and web; increased value delivery to users by reducing feature parity issues.
• Performance improvements: React Native apps, with proper implementation, can achieve performance levels comparable to or exceeding native apps, even on low-powered devices.
• Hot reloading's impact: React Native's hot reloading significantly speeds up development, contrasting sharply with lengthy compile times in native development.
• TypeScript's role in talent portability: TypeScript adoption enhanced collaboration across web and mobile teams, fostering easier developer transitions between platforms.
• Importance of native expertise: While React Native offers significant advantages, native mobile development expertise remains crucial for optimizing performance, addressing platform-specific nuances, and handling complex tasks.
• Shared codebase benefits: Migrating to a shared codebase allows for broader impact from improvements and reduces repeated efforts across platforms.
• Community engagement: The React Native community is active and engaged, with key players like Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Shopify contributing to its growth and improvement.