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Comment by Touche | Hacker News Reader

If I'm one of Reacts competitors I'm ecstatic that they're abandoning the web. It reminds me of when Angular wastes energy on angular.dart because of a Google mandate. Didn't help them much.

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One of the reasons I have more confidence in React than Angular is that Facebook and Instagram actually use React in flagship products. I wouldn't worry about React abandoning the web until Facebook and Instagram stop using it for their web products.

Also, while all Dart does for Angular is fragment the community (because now we have Angular web devs using Dart, Angular web devs using JS and soon Angular web devs using AtScript), React Native actually does the opposite.

A lot of web devs already also do mobile development or at least work on hybrid apps (i.e. WebView-based mobile apps). React Native enables web devs to develop mobile apps that wouldn't have been feasible before (either because of the limitations of WebView or because they would have had to worry about learning an entirely different stack that is orthogonal to their web technology knowledge).

I work on React. We're not abandoning the web.

But you are deemphasizing it, no?

> If I'm one of Reacts competitors I'm ecstatic that they're abandoning the web.

Wait, can you quote where they said that. Maybe a particular time in the video...

"Abandoning the web" seems a bit strong here. One difference between angular+dart and react+native is this:

angular_devs ∩ dart_devs ~= 0 (relative to angular_devs) react_devs ∩ mobile_devs ~= react_devs

Almost everyone who uses react also has to do mobile development, and would like a simpler way to do it. This solves a real and widespread need.

Instead of "abandoning the web" I'd call it a "post browser" framework. What we're seeing here is the first piece in the next-gen internet world that doesn't require a web browser.

Where was the web abandoned?

React is no longer a web library, so today.

React has been carefully designed to encompass better UI patterns regardless of the underlying platform. There are some very thoughtful and capable people working on it. Worth reading Jordan's thoughts here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8962171

Expansion != abandonment. In fact, were I a "competitor," I would be concerned about the philosophical buy-in that said expansion could induce.

It's not? I must have missed that announcement.

I think you misunderstood. they are adding a non web library, not leaving the web.

The benefits of using Dart are debatable. There are however no such doubts on the utility of native mobile apps. The lack of adoption of Dart is due to the lack of interest within the broader JS community; the same community which is going to be excited about React supporting native apps. This immediately improves the targets to which they can deploy with skills they already have.

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