React Native as the main mobile trend of the future
Published: 2019-10-07 10:05:27

Needless to say, the software development industry is full of challenges, every mobile OS has its peculiarities and whenever teams try to provide application development services for both Android and iOS, these peculiarities and challenges come all together and create even bigger problems with compatibility, UI/UX issues, etc. I guess it is the ultimate dream for all the software developers - to be able to write code, that would be interoperable and reusable everywhere.

Today, we have different cross-platform tools and technologies on the market: Xamarin, Flutter, Apache Cordova, Ionic - but all of them have the same problem - products made using these technologies look weird, work slow and still have interoperability complications. It seemed like there was no hope for a decent mobile cross-platform technology, that would enable the creation of products, that would be indistinguishable from native, and be just as feature-rich. But then [React Native](https://react-native.org/) burst in and became the silver lining in cross-platform development.

Our team, being a [React Native development company](https://smartym.pro/solution/react-native-development/), wants to share some technical experience with you and tell, whether this mobile trend is convenient to use, or not worth paying attention to.

React Native was created on the base of [Facebook’s](https://facebook.github.io/react-native/) React library for creating user interfaces, which, in its turn, is based on JavaScript. Compared to grand software development languages, that are used in the mobile industry (Java, for example), ReactNative is a very young technology, and yet, React Native development services have gained huge popularity over the last 2 years.

React Native works like a Lego Constructor - it gives you a numerous amount of “bricks” - components and, using the ones you need plus adding some native coding, if necessary (i.e. using ProgressBarAndroid and ProgressViewIOS), you get an adaptive product. The greatest thing is that web developers can use React Native, write the same code they are used to, but get a mobile instead of a web application.

What do you get, when you choose React Native as your leading mobile application development services technology?

- Adequate performance level compared to other cross-platform-based applications;
- Less headache in the mobile development process;
- Reusable code - the same tools work both for iOS and Android;
- A great solution for mobile MVP’s, especially when you already have a web version, that you need to convert quickly to mobile operating systems;
- Hot reloading - this React Native’s feature enables to build only the modified modules, which is significantly faster (compared to Native development);
- Debugging and testing processes become faster and easier as well due to fact, that you see the situation on both devices at the same time.

Nevertheless, React Native is not flawless. To say the least, it still has an insufficient amount of mobile native components. Without Native developers nearby it is possible to develop only primitive mobile products without platform-specific features, since, unfortunately, React Native doesn’t support all the APIs. Moreover, JavaScript, being called an “untyped” language, implies the developers to be very careful due to the absence of strict programming rules. 

The second major flaw is the React Native’s poor documentation. All the available information at the moment is scarce. Not enough data on how to set up a testing environment. However, React Native is evolving pretty fast, the community and the developers are constantly solving the most disturbing issues, that’s we here at Smartym Pro are not afraid to use this technology in our mobile development expertise. Furthermore, we actively participate in the GitHub React Native community ourselves, as a professional mobile app development company. 

One way or another, we personally believe, that React Native is going to make a revolution in [mobile application development services](https://smartym.pro/mobile-app-development/) due to many reasons. Using React Native can save lots of time, and time is the most precious resource in this world. A single codebase instead of two, efficient human resource usage and staff allocation.

There is also one more thing we would like to mention. You won’t be able to deny the influence level of React Native on the modern development industry when you find out how many companies are already taking advantage of this technology - Tesla, Walmart, Skype, Instagram, and, obviously, Facebook and Facebook ads. 

The only thing we are most nervous about is the probability of React Native being shut down by Facebook. These fears are not groundless. There was a platform called Parse, also made by Facebook, it was a very promising Backend-as-a-Service project, that was used in 500K projects. Parse has been existing for 4 years when Facebook suddenly announced, that they are stopping the support of the platform. The decision was pretty sudden, and still, nobody really realizes why it ever happened, so there is a small likelihood, that something like this will happen with React Native in the next couple of years.

In conclusion, we would like to admit, that we are looking forward to React Native becoming the next top mobile development language. We are convinced, that quality, speed, and efficiency - are the traits that will help React Native become accepted by software development companies all over the world.