Hacker News Reader

Comment by ssijak | Hacker News Reader

I evaluated react native and I really like what I saw and was on the edge to use it. BUT, I am still afraid that it will bite me somewhere in time where it will hurt much. For example, I want to build an app with 50% standard interface stuff and about 50% custom, with some animations throughout the interface. From what I gathered reading other people experiences it would be a bit of a pain in react native. And the other smaller reason is that I want to build native macOS app that goes along with it and as far as I can tell from my own experience, only natively written apps feel good on osx. And just don`t mention Electron, I hate it.

View on HN

I think it is best to write the "core" of your application using a language that can run on all of your target platforms -- which typically means you'll have to use C/C++/Rust or something similar that can be compiled to native code and supports somewhat sane FFI. The UI for each platform should be done using the Native UI toolkit for the platform. That way, you can avoid most of the code duplication.

If you plan to target Android, you might want to check out Google's Java to Objective-C transpiler[1]. That will let you write the core of the app in Java and transpire it to Objective-C for iOS and macOS. The UI will still have to be written using the native toolkit for the platform, though. Fair warning: I have no idea how good or bad it is -- never used it myself.

[1] https://github.com/google/j2objc

React-native animations have come a long way. I think your concerns are real, but you'd be pleasantly surprised. You might want to dip your toes, see how far you get in a day and how it feels.

Article on animation improvements from Feb: https://facebook.github.io/react-native/blog/2017/02/14/usin...

Have you evaluated TypeScript native?

I prefer TS over JS, and I wonder how well it is supported, or if that is even an issue.

> And just don`t mention Electron, I hate it.

Election is the new Flash. All hail new Flash! /s

Seriously, how do supposedly smart people come up with things like Electron?

Why was it downvoted?

Sarcastic comments repeating the sentiment of the parent don't add value to the discussion.

Because you didn't mention what specifically is wrong with Electron

Reply on news.ycombinator.com