What is React Native and how is it different?

Normally, when you build an app for Apple’s mobile devices (iPhone, iPad, etc), developers are forced to work within the XCode integrated development environment (IDE), the Swift programming language and a user interface toolkit called Interface Builder. Similarly when building Android apps, it’s necessary to use Android Studio (or some other IDE) along with the Java or Kotlin programming languages.

The major drawbacks of this branching of development effort are increased development costs and increased time to launch. Developers are required to effectively duplicate all the business logic from one app to the other. This makes the initial time to launch much longer and more expensive, and it also makes maintaining the app less efficient as maintenance and feature development continues to be duplicated.

Enter React Native. React Native is a cross platform development framework nurtured by the development teams at Facebook and a much wider open source community. By using React Native we are able to able to dramatically cut development costs for deploying a native app to more than just one platform. For apps with straightforward features that don’t require too much in the way of highly customized user interface controls or advanced features, React Native enables our developers to build your app once, and deploy it on the iOS App Store and Google Play Store.

Who Uses React Native?

While Facebook remains the biggest company to leverage React Native, there are many other large tech companies banking on the future of React Native. Read more below:

• Discord uses React Native

• Powering UberEATS with React Native and Uber Engineering

• Walmart and Bloomberg are also banking big on React Native.

React Native is a very viable candidate for the enterprise and startup products.