I don't *want* to use React Native

React Native doesn't build the best apps, but I would choose it over building 2 apps with Swift/Kotlin for iOS/Android store.
#benawad #reactnative ​
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#benawad

[@james3742]

I don't want to use React Native(as a millionaire)

[@kolya7921]

TechLead’s line

[@thisbevibhor]

More like Clement mihilsenoughAlready with the AlgoExpert plug.

[@johngoldman767]

Lol... toasted....

[@volttideify]

But are you a divorced tech lead that was working for fb?

[@MdShamimRahman]

He is great teacher, I don't know why he used that title, whatever.

[@theTweak0284]

"There are some developers out there that will write you an app in assembly and it just comes out slower than a python interpreter"

[@undefined365]

Lol

[@kunal_chand]

I just come here to hear Ben ASMR

[@abbasegbeyemi]

Yes that's what it's called. I was trying to think of a name for why I keep coming back.

[@sambitsahoo2700]

Truuuu

[@StephenRayner]

Hahahahahaha

[@user-ee8zm8lj3q]

wtf

[@abhilashaa2799]

@@thecashewtrader3328 lmao

[@linusjoensson8219]

One of the better 30 second intros I´ve seen on KZbin. Well done.

[@paulkre]

I just found this channel and it’s my favorite now.

[@Manivelarino]

I feel like developer experience is severely underrated. The power of having a single codebase way outweights any performance or size costs you add imo. Especially in 2020 when everyone is dropping support for any device more than 10 years old.

[@twerkyfingers]

companies don't and don't need to optimise experience for developers. they want best experience for the users.

[@aurelianspodarec2629]

Companies should optimize user experience for the user... Just a few performance issues on react native for the user means the company is going to lose millions of dollars, so its actually cheaper to have two teams.

[@Goremachine]

Your opinion is wrong IMO. Hyrbrid frameworks are always frustrating as hell to work with, full native is a way better development experience and it yields a superior product. The only reason to go hybrid is if the business is on a shoestring budget or cannot find competent enough programmers.

[@aurelianspodarec2629]

@@Goremachine Yeah, antoher fun thing is some devs need to write native code and abstract it with react native xd imagine

[@jeffGordon852]

"a single codebase way outweights" You mean a single codebase that has Javascript AND Swift AND Kltlin code? Yeah 3 codebase in one, and pretend it's fine

[@indycinema]

"It's the way things are, life sucks" - New React Native Slogan.

[@hououinkyouma5372]

I just recently built my first app in React Native and this video makes me very happy

[@tyfoodsforthought]

This introduction had me rolling 😂 Great video! 🔥

[@bapple7844]

I think that native development should be done just to know what react native is abstracting, but I feel like in a year react native will be able to create apps that can contend with native development

[@MarvinTurner]

What I’ve been hearing that interests me is companies making apps that are native but utilize React Native for specific views (like a profile view, or a view that fetches and displays rows of data). I believe I read that Airbnb is one of the proponents of this approach.

[@eunicebeji8254]

You just made my day better Ben ! Love from Nigeria.

[@godwinrigginglife3780]

awfa?

[@eunicebeji8254]

I dey man.

[@ReadTheCommentFirst]

Probably worth revisiting now that Flutter for web is production ready.

[@miguelnuno928]

yessssssssss

[@dataluchs1288]

thanks for that, I share your opinion, I think many developers are also just missing the business side of code and digital tech in general - just beeing able to move to the market faster with a smaller team and a shared codebase enables organizations to stay more flexible, especially in highly uncertain market environments, which is a huge benefit for me from a business innovation and transformation perspective.

[@FilipCodes]

More react tutorials please. Love ya Ben

[@bru6626]

The first part gave me enough motivation to continue watching.

[@CodingAfterThirty]

Love this video, was fun to watch and legitimate advice.

[@Alan-wl9xi]

Thanks so much for this video, as a beginner of web/app dev, it's really helpful to understand if React is a good choice if one person wants to build for both web/ios/android.

[@nickaguirre2196]

4:11 this totally opened my eyes to why I absolutely need to use React and React Native for my personal project. This alone saves so much time and work for solo devs.

[@SouthernSeneca]

Ben, thank you, I'm learning a lot from you

[@chemedev]

One of your best videos so far (well, I've watched < 10 but still)

[@lxghtless]

I’m a WET programmer. It’s so much easier.

[@addnab]

Write Everything Thrice

[@volmehen]

Why even try?

[@shehr-yar7135]

These thirsty bots are getting smarter

[@roselpadilla]

@@volmehen I felt that...

[@fullstack_journey]

Write Extra Tests?

[@casualcomputing]

If you do Flutter you can make the website in the time you saved using Flutter. I have made two production apps using RN, and am now about halfway in my first Flutter app. My impression so far is that if developing an app natively for iOS and Android is 2, then React Native is about 1.5. Flutter feels more like 0.8 so far. As long as you develop CRUD apps with mostly just forms and standard widgets you'll probably be OK with either, but when it is time for slippy maps and video playback I had serious headaches with RN, especially on the Android side.

[@avnishpandey113]

Thanks. Was really insightful!

[@levi4thon]

Those big companies that have both Android and iOS teams also use React Native because they like to manage three code bases: Swift, Kotlin and React.

[@michaelcallahan8412]

I know you aren't big on design Ben, but I think a video on how you plan and design your full stack projects would be super helpful. Your tutorials are great but you kinda just jump into it and I've always wondered what kind of planning it took to set you up for those. Thanks!

[@angry_moose94]

look into software architecture

[@moose43h]

bro you scared me in the beginning

[@ramisalim8729]

Ben is Ben 😂

[@bryanurizar]

Ben, you’re awesome.

[@TheoParis]

Agree

[@RVKAWAAA]

Love you man, i like this, greeting from Argentina!!

[@usmansbk]

Zuck is a computer lizard though

[@YunisRajab]

Performance is less of an issue everyday when you carry a super computer in your pocket

[@joao.mag.freitas]

@Ben Awad you have full compatability in sharing code with Flutter apps and Flutter Web Apps or even just an web app with a JS library. Dart transpiles to Javascript if you use the correct approaches on your code to be fully dart and not depend on Flutter

[@davidbasil3161]

This guy looks like he's always smiling or about to laugh

[@AbdoTech0]

Indeed 🤣😂

[@amineabdellahoui5912]

In one word I love you !

[@samnayakawadi]

Clear & Cut Video. Loved Watching it. Understood Everything He Said 👍😁

[@Proloyable]

I 100% agree. It is not about native vs hybrid or kotlin/swift vs react native/flutter it is about having a common standard for a common app. And after all this time we still do not have that that's what crazy.

[@basiccodingwithadam8125]

Great explanation and thanks for speaking up for us react native believers

[@williamhenry661]

I see a new Ben Awad video, I click. It’s simple.

[@TechdubberStudios]

Hilarious! Thank you for this. And yes, I completely agree.

[@StephenRayner]

Can you cover react-native-web? Architecting out a new solution at work currently considering it. Also looking at how to manage consistency between our product, design and development team. So considering storybooks, already using Figma and I intend to make a UI library. Would be good to see a video on building a UI library.

[@vivekchauhan6937]

Hey, i love your intermediate level courses on youtube. So, any new course coming in near future?

[@rohankapur5776]

Honestly I prefer Flutter over React Native but I see why people choose RN.

[@handsanitizer2457]

yeah I've been using flutter, it's missing a few things but it's getting there

[@burakkosova8481]

​@@handsanitizer2457 I've been learning flutter for a week and i don't have any development experience so i can't even compare them what do you think should i switch to rn for adapting to web easily in future or just stick to flutter

[@StarBattle08]

@@burakkosova8481 just stick to flutter. But, it's up to you. I just started learning flutter a few days ago and i'm used to react native (not saying that i'm an expert at it). But for me, since rn use javascript, it was easier for me to learn.

[@burakkosova8481]

@@StarBattle08 yeah committing to one technology would be better i guess thank you

[@rifaldhiaw]

For me personally, I prefer RN because Flutter uses Dart which is OOP. While in RN I can use something like ReasonML for FP. IMO writing logic is way more crucial than building UI

[@wcharun2141]

2:17 I literally just died over here. Best content of coding history bruh.

[@jayskieeee]

keep up the great work! always making me laugh

[@mr.c7411]

Depends on the need

[@euanmorgann]

Absolutely spot on!

[@wrongturn_w]

Would love to hear your take on flutter web now!

[@TheGains]

As a flutter dev I have to say that the code sharing between native apps and web is actually very easy now. Flutter web is still in beta so it has some quirks that you have to account for but for the most part it's a very smooth experience between mobile and web (I would argue that more so than with react native and web). Obviously for companies it's much easier to find react devs and put them to work with react native with very small amount of time needed for adjustment which is probably react native's biggest asset right now compared to competition.

[@mattwilliams1844]

Not to mention transpiling for desktops is also quite easy, (quirks as well) but still

[@HonestCode]

Good luck with SEO on your flutter app

[@junetxpid2425]

@@HonestCode you mean google play SEO? lol

[@luanmenezes832]

you have a great point

[@BharadwajRbwaj95]

Ben is my Person of the Year 2020.

[@dotio5664]

What do you think of capacitorjs or Cordova, where you just run your PWA inside of a web view as an app(addressing your issue with PWAs)?

[@ShahidFoy]

Good points, ionic framework is the future

[@SamarthCat]

I would use unity for ultimate platform support, it is technically a game engine but it can render UI really easily and it has great performance.

[@vivekt.2038]

can u explain more ?

[@PettrusSherlock]

Hey Ben as for the PWA you can develop your pwa and put on play store and if i am not mistaken apple store aswell

[@reneg1155]

Hey! You are the guy who created VS Code Stories. Awesome!

[@OBLIVIOUSKARI]

I hear that by end of year, react native will have an update that removes the bridge and Make it almost as fast as native

[@km_youtube23]

you got any sources? As a new level flutter dev I'm interested in React instead.

[@vocalizeAI]

You can get a mvp for all plataforms much faster with react native

[@Kaze919]

As someone just coming to programming his logic makes total sense here.

[@ophir1982]

Wondering what's your take on Flutter now, ~6 months later - Flutter 2 is released with support for Mobile, Web and Desktop (Windows, Mac and Linux). You should do a follow up video...

[@Stevexupen]

agree completely with your point, but still go with swift and kotlin route because i just like learning different programming paradigms in general (and i like pain and suffering apparently?)

[@arrowfunction3200]

more react native content pls

[@samnaghavi9775]

if I'm wrong please correct me but you can do tons of stuff with js but you only use dart in flutter. so when choosing between these two. the core language itself should be considerd a factor.

[@timrc666]

Bro the mechanical arm zuck thing just won you a sub my dude hahahah bravo 10/10

[@DjLeonSKennedy]

agree with love, top 1 video!

[@jiachen1078]

Can’t agree more! Can you make a to tutorial on how to setup IAP with react native?

[@jmitchell2464]

Lol and this is why you use native

[@jiachen1078]

@@jmitchell2464 good point. but after all, i still want to build it with react native. One reason i can't agree more is my website is already using react, so a lot of stuff can be shared (copy and paste) between two.

[@archmad]

This is the reason why i used react native bec i already know react. To ke, learning flutter is a deadend unless they do it in web apps

[@raghavkanwal]

How about Ionic + React? I'm a filthy Angular dev so Ionic works for my use case, but Ionic announced support for React in around April.

[@RadTwin]

I might be wrong but idk if ionic compiles to native. I think it is all in WebView? Not sure if that changed so in terms of performance not as good as react native

[@sadhlife]

@@RadTwin it's still PWA

[@pitisradu]

@@RadTwin yes its not native, still a webview but way faster than before. In terms of performance, yes, ofc its not as fast as RN but its also extremely easy to make apk or ipa with it

[@andreanonali4557]

This year I will go for JS for sure

[@indraworks6050]

Go flutter ,leave it react native :))))

[@andreanonali4557]

@@indraworks6050 I said JS not react native:))))))))))))

[@thomasdavid9725]

senator, we run ads

[@alwinvillero4404]

**cheeky mark smile**

[@BenRangel]

"One of the first things you learn as a junior dev is DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself). But one of the first things you learn as a senior dev is a leaky abstraction is worse then repeating yourself twice". Great summary. I've struggled with what I should teach junior devs. As someone who is not big into DRY - I still feel like I have to teach them DRY first in order for them to learn the rules before being allowed to break the rules. (But meh, overall I feel like it's pretty easy to understand DRY in hindsight, even if you've spent your junior years repeating yourself. Many other areas of programming seem tougher to learn afterwards. Typed languages for example. Or TDD.)

[@nanonkay5669]

Them dry jokes is what I'm always here for 🤣

[@juice-opinion]

you should definitely try nativescript! it just had a rough two months because it got handed off to a new primary maintainer at the same time they released a new major version, a new js runtime for ios, AND ios 14 support. but i think they learned their lesson, having talked to the maintainer about it. the angular support is A++ throughout the community, vue support is pretty good, and there's also some support for react and svelte. the tradeoff is you can't share templates across web and mobile, but most everything else you can, and the native plugins are generally great. build times suck but the performance makes up for it

[@juice-opinion]

the ionic suite is kind of a waste but capacitor on its own is fantastic when you don't need to do much more than replicate your website on a phone

[@RomanKrawchenko]

With PWA you can basically download an app to your phone. Could you or someone elaborate more on why you think PWA might be worse way to develop a mobile app than React Native?

[@jlf_]

React Native is great for smaller projects where you don’t want to afford too much time. I code apps since 2014 (professionally) and native is still best, of course. But RN is neat to play!

[@josecoverlessons]

have you used Flutter?

[@sachinelearning]

Builds a website to share recipes........Brings up different types of Pasta in every video...........Damn! Ben is making me hungry!!! :D

[@baskett98]

I prefer flutter because I don't have a lot of experience with web so flutter and it's widget tree concept just made more sense to me.

[@politicallynotcorrect2968]

Flutter can compiled to a site also and it is good enough...

[@failist9570]

Honestly, If you ask me why people prefer React Native over Java (Android) and Swift (IOS) is because the whole Javascript ecosystem and NPM. Your project gets setup in minutes, you don't have to worry about configuration and there are a lot of open source projects to get the job done!

[@megatronusv2215]

Is this satire. Someone pinch me

[@angry_moose94]

that's called being a simp.

[@SpaceTimeBeing_]

it's kotlin. Java is dead for Android. Also there is kotlin multi-platform and jetpack compose coming up which could replace flutter by another year.

[@megatronusv2215]

@@SpaceTimeBeing_ I was questioning if his preference for the React ecosystem was satire? What does that have to do with Kotlin or Flutter

[@theoligarchist1503]

what excuse does Kotlin has to not compile the same code into IOS native ?

[@grim.reaper]

Angular Dart gonna be a disaster 🤣

[@DinoFancellu]

Flutter is really nice now, but there are simply MUCH fewer jobs than React Native. I learned Flutter for fun, and its very impressive, but I'm learning React Native now, for fun, and for the fact that there are lot more jobs that ask for it vs Flutter

[@mrbam8833]

The real question is do you make more money as a KZbinr or as a Dev?

[@benfrese3573]

pretty legit question

[@bawad]

yes

[@ofjdaz]

I never thought a developer could have a rockstar attitude

[@AndrushkaEpic]

I got addicted to ract-native, im making now a shop book app, and I get to sleep at 03 at night cause i love react-native so much

[@SeanGoresht]

Overall, I think this viewpoint makes sense. However, Cordova does still exist as well as Node-Webkit, so other combinations do exist. Also note that to build iOS apps, you will NEED XCode unlike Android dev studio which works on any machine (though I imagine anyone watching this video already knew this).

[@SeanGoresht]

Point being that you CAN just embed your "app" in a web view and ship it as an "app" if you really want (a la Cordova).

[@arashitempesta]

the main advantage right now with react native is that you have something like expo, which is a godsend. "want to test your app without having to bend the knee and suck apple? no problem bro, here, download this little client on your ios device, log with your expo account and you will see your project currently in dev or on the release channel you want to test, go ahead have fun", "on android too? kay buddy do the same there". "oh ready to make a build? kk, dont worry bruh, I will build and compile that for you on the cloud, just sit tight I will send you the artifact for the download". on top of the fact you have release channels where you can tell certain builds to only receive updates from a staging channel, production channel etc, it really raises you up to speed. Disadvantages however are what you would expect, need to configure that low level shenanigans? want to add a native library that is not currently in the expo managed workflow? good luck buddy, see if you can work around that, if not welp, you can always eject and keep using the channels and the other expo libraries that are compatible with the bare workwflow but now the config and compiling for each platform is on you. meanwhile in flutter, ionic and others, there is nothing akin to that yet as far as I know. The react community is both a blessing and a curse sometimes.

[@hououinkyouma5372]

I've just started app dev and have really been enjoying all the stuff that expo makes easier for newbs like me. However, I can't figure out how to reduce apk size after builds no matter how hard I look. People tell me to just copy paste sources from the expo project over to a "react-native init" project but how will I get the expo libraries I imported originally without expo? This has been such a headache. Made a simple audio playing app as my first one and it had a bloated 58 MBs apk x_x

[@arashitempesta]

@@hououinkyouma5372 there is no way around the size of an app build from expo, that is one of the drawbacks too, all of those are in the documentation. The app is big because expo by default includes all the binaries and native configs for anything you might need from expo so you can just use expo publish without worry, that also means there might be a lot of code you dont really need so in return you get a really thicc app. They are aware of such shortcomings and have been saying they are working on trying to customize such behavior to only include what you need and such but yeah, if you really need to shave off that size you would need to eject, and that suggestion they gave you make sense, you can take all your code you have right now and just migrate it to a plain codebase, but it would be easier to just use expo eject, it will give you all the configurations for ios and android and you wont need to track which libraries you need to install again and such. Of course if either you eject or take the codebase to a react native init one, you still need to check which expo libraries you were using and check if they are avaiable outside the managed workflow. The most common ones are avaiable, at the end of the day, when you use expo install, its just an npm package that makes sure that whatever you might end up installing, is compatible with the expo sdk version you are using, check the eject section in the docs so you can make a well thought decision.

[@hououinkyouma5372]

@@arashitempesta Thanks for the advice! I didn't know about the eject option for expo. Will surely look into it. Also, I read on a stackoverflow post that some libraries aren't available through expo and one would need to download them from a simple react native project. If that's true, then wouldn't getting too used to expo be detrimental to one's experience in the long run? Sorry for the questions, I'm just curious 😅

[@arashitempesta]

​@@hououinkyouma5372 expo install uses npm under the hood, expo install is an utility to make sure that the packages you are downloading are at the correct supported version for your expo sdk. Example, react native webview needs native configurations below, that is why its included in the expo documentation because the expo team included those configs for you so you can use that library if you need it. if the library uses only JS there is no problem. And the detrimental part well yes, expo abstracts all the configurations you would need to learn, maintain and configure for the platforms you are targeting. Its like create react app, under the hood it configures babel, webpack and such so you can just start coding and set up all the base functionality, if later you need to configure those low level configs, eject and do it but at that point it means you now have to bite the bullet and learn how to do that. It all comes down to what you need and time, if you can just use expo because it fulfils all your requirements there is nothing wrong with going with it and not bothering learning the platform specific configs. It all comes down to weighting the pros and cons for each option.

It needs some extra effort to convert React code into React native, it just making reuse easier. Flutter code can be 100 percent reused for Flutter web without any effort. Also Flutter renders faster than React native because it is not using Android's and iOS' native view containers but still looking exactly like a native app (Disclaimer: I just tried to build apps in material design right now).

[@rvb6516]

any updates how do you like flutter now

[@danielvillarroel8356]

Im willing to give up some speed and just build an app once. I rather save 5+months plus you can always make React Native faster I think, just needs more development ?

[@chupitolepame5357]

You're insane but realistic man, new sub here

[@iamdami4500]

As for me I believe their are some flutter Widgets that would be abandoned cause the Widgets are just really too much and flutter team are not stopping at 107 Widgets, one has to open documentations everytime just

[@abhim6380]

You look so much like Alireza Firouzja, the chess guy

[@gauravdwivedi2829]

Plz make advance tutorials videos frequently ....

[@hardikb562]

True that

[@usmansbk]

He did a 14 hours video that could have been a two weeks video

[@levi4thon]

@@usmansbk and it probably took him a few months to make.

[@benharrybornemann5474]

To the point. Care to take a look at flutter for web now and share your opinion? Or too busy with your startup?

[@lars1597]

Best is flutter so chill

[@carterv.31]

Ben speaks sense.

[@bigchunk1]

I like it. Especially the beginning. Why we gotta elect to deal with compatibility issues in 2020?

[@TheGothGaming]

I use flutter and I love it. but... I do only use it for mobile, not for web (yet). if you only care about the mobile app then flutter is the best option.

[@chordfunc3072]

Your critic of flutter is valid if you are just looking to do a quick port of a website to an app... but generally, I just find that the things the mobile app requires are not exactly the same as the website. Mobile apps have interactions and animations that a website often doesn't have, so you'll have to do a good amount of rewrites either way just on the view side. Business logic is often also on the server if your "business" is easily portable anyway. You'll of course have to do some clientside validation as well. But writing client side validation is pretty quick and easy. if you are in the business of doing more low-level stuff not just validating "business rules" I think flutter is a really good middle-ground. I think RN is cool an all, but I just don't personally find it that useful, its been a while since I've tried it out though, but back in the day, it was just painful. I used to do native development in java and swift, but these days 80% of everything I do is flutter. It's so great. I'm definitely a bit of a flutter fanboy, and I hope flutter for web becomes usable... I hate dealing with CSS and HTML directly😂 Thanks for the content, keep it up!

[@theteacher010]

What's the pic in the background? Looks really familiar.

[@Alphfirm]

What are your thoughts on Ionic React / Capacitor?

[@austinhoward1035]

I’ve had a blast using Ionic and capacitor. Plus it’s much more forward thinking with stencil web components and native wrapper for any platform. Haven’t tried their ci/cd app flow but from what I’ve heard it’s buttery.

[@owenwexler7214]

React Native CLI crashes nonstop when I try to use it with iOS/XCode on my system (seriously 300+ lines of error messages+crash when I try to build a literal brand new project with nothing added, Android Studio works fine, even reinstalling XCode from scratch doesn’t fix this). Expo works perfectly and is a pleasure to work with but some of its limitations are dealbreakers for later implementations of larger apps that I have planned (lack of in-app payment support is the big one). I will still use React Native/Expo for smaller apps but I’m learning Flutter now in the hopes that it will work better than RN for larger app needs. Still holding onto the dream of one code base for iOS and Android, let’s see if that works out.