Is React Native App Development Good or Bad? Knowing the Framework Through its Pros and Cons

Engineering the best in class applications requires an innovative approach. Failure to do so directly translates into losing a competitive edge in the market. Almost 100% of the mobile applications are running on two platforms, iOS, and Android. This kind of oligopolistic foothold of these two platforms warrants every business owner to harness it and share their digital product with the entire cohort of audiences at once.

React Native came from the house of Facebook in 2013 and ever since its inception, the technology has seen impressive growth. Its popularity has grown to an extent that as of 2020, 42% of the developers across the globe are using React Native to build their applications.

The ability to learn once and write anywhere gives the developers an easy and efficient system to not only create performant applications but also make the requisite edits quickly. More importantly, React Native’s popularity meter has gone through the roof because it provides a native look and feel.

At the same time, there are issues with iOS rendering, the limitations put forth by the inability to deliver Ahead in Time similar to Xamarin are some of the things that can become a bottleneck for the developers.

In this excerpt, we will take you through the pros and cons of react native mobile app development.

Pros of Using React Native for App Development

• Code Reusability:

  React Native allows reusing 90% of the codebase. This means that to create a new application from scratch, the developers can reuse 90% of the code from the previous application and make changes to give it a specific look, feel, and function.

  After some minor changes are done to ensure nativity, React Native application development processes are apt for developing native-looking systems.

• Higher Performance with Native APIs:

  There are two things here that you need to understand. Applications made with React Native render their UI via native APIs. This means that the UI rendering is faster, seamless, and efficient here. The second aspect is that the connection between JavaScript code and the native code is provided by a bridge. This bridge works separately from the UI rendering system.

  Ultimately, the smooth rendering of the UI ensures higher and native-like performance. Because it also uses a separate thread for JavaScript logic rendering, the applications built with this framework resemble the native iOS and Android applications.

• Hot and Live Reloading:

  There are two things that developers particularly love about React Native, hot reloading and live reloading. There is a difference between the two and both are equally efficient in making a developer’s life easy.

  With live reloading, the entire application code gets compiled in real-time. The updates and changes are compiled as the developer goes on writing the code. In other words, live reloading allows the framework to auto compile the changes and render the same in the application.

  Hot reloading, on the other hand, is a bit different than live reloading, but the end motive of this functionality is the same, to make the developer’s work easy. Hot reloading helps update a component of the application without compiling the codebase of the entire application again and again. Live reloading refreshes the application while hot reloading shows the changes made to a specific component.

• Community Support:

  Another area where React Native app development is particularly preferred by the developers is community support. It is easy to find help about almost everything related to React native application development.

  The entire community makes efforts to ask, share, learn, and teach each other about all sorts of capabilities of the framework. One of the reasons why a majority of the developers have chosen React Native is due to the extent of community support.

• Third-Party Plugins:

  Developers sometimes face trouble when they are not allowed or are unable to use third-party plugins for developing the application. Most of the time security is given as a reason for not allowing third-party plugins integration. React Native not only allows integrating additional plugins but also gives the freedom to customize their codebase to provide a truly native experience.

• Time and Cost Efficient:

  This benefit of choosing React Native app development is self-explanatory. Think about it, instead of creating two applications, the development team will only have to create it once. At the same time, there is no need to hire two teams for development, one React Native team is more than enough to create applications for all platforms.

• JavaScript provided Rich Ecosystem:

  There are two things here that must be noted. One, JavaScript is used to write the code applications built with React Native. 12.4 million developers across the globe use JS. So, the core development community is already huge.

  This further makes it easier for all of these developers to adapt and start using React Native. This makes it easier to build libraries that facilitate a developer’s work further enhancing the application development speed and efficiency.

  The popularity of ReactJS further gives more integrated access to the developers irrespective of their location and area of expertise.

Must Read: 10 Things We Learned While Building a React Native App in 2021

Cons of Using React Native for Mobile App Development

Coming from one of the tech leads at Facebook, the guy says that React Native is garbage. Even at the Instagram office, the developers are thrilled to use the plain old Vanilla iOS/Android for building applications and keeping things as simple as possible.

Why does an ex- tech lead at Facebook and Google think so low about React Native? Is there another side to the story? Let’s know about the cons of React Native.

• It’s Not Truly Native:

  A narrative has been built around the cross-platform app development frameworks that save time and cost while sustaining the true nativity across all the platforms.

  Well, behind the scenes, it is something different. Yes, a developer can write the code once, but that is limited to the main features and major parts of the application.

  Everything other than the application features code has to be written twice. For example linters. Linters are the code debugging tools and the developer may need separate linters to check the iOS and Android code as well as the common codebase. Other than this, there is testing, logging, deployment, crash reporting and so on. All these aspects need to be addressed separately for both the platforms.

• Performance Issues:

  With native coding, there are no issues with the performance and UI rendering because the code is written specifically for the functions.

  With React Native, writing the code once and deploying everywhere is done via three components; JavaScript thread, native thread, and a bridge which is responsible for their connection.

  The JavaScript thread has a limited capacity to process requests from the native thread. Increase the number of requests from its capacity and the application will start to lag.

• Requirement of Native Developer:

  You cannot build an application just with a react native app development team. As it has been stated before, some components of the application need to be tweaked to provide full native performance. So, developers who are experts in React native and Android application development may find trouble in writing the codes for the part of the code where an iOS native app developer is required.

• Finding the Error is not Easy:

  Apart from the fact that the application built with React Native needs to be checked separately, finding the code source is easier said than done. There is a common code source, right? So, an error in the common source will manifest itself at all the places where that code is running. So the testing team has to check the code for errors on both platforms.

• Lesser Support for Android:

  In the beginning, React Native was built for iOS applications only. It was sometimes that the support for Android was added. This is one reason why React Native has inferior support for Android. Even though the development team at Facebook is addressing this, the developers will run into problems until it is not fixed. Since the platform for Android applications requires more research and testing, various big names in the tech world like Discord or AirBnb have left React Native.

So, Is It Beneficial to Choose React Native for App Development?

The answer to this question depends on the purpose and the type of application is required. If the purpose is to save cost and time while compromising a bit on the quality and performance any type of cross platform application development framework will work.

Another case is when the objective of the application is to proffer a graphical interface to the end-user. More importantly, when communication of a lower scale by using APIs and third-party applications is what needs to be done, React Native is the choice to make.

To Sum it Up

Even though there are some significant issues with React Native its popularity especially for B2B application development is growing. This means that as a service and a development framework it is growing and maturing while paying attention to the troubles faced by the developer community.

Where native application development will be the first choice if the objective is to ensure high performance, seamless UI, and smooth operation. A lot of commercial applications are still being made with React Native and they are doing amazingly well. React native app development can turn out to an ideal solution if there are React Native, ReactJs, and JavaScript developers working together.