Why We Love React Native (And You Should, Too!)

The popularity of React Native is on the rise, and there are thousands of apps built on the technology. There’s rarely any of the big tech companies yet to embrace React Native. They are all building their latest apps on the platform.

With just a single codebase, you can come up with native iOS and Android apps. In reality, react-native has changed mobile app development, becoming the favorite mobile development framework.

It’s time to look beyond hate and have a full understanding of the framework. With a humble beginning in 2013, React Native has grown in leaps and bounds. By devoting time to understanding the functionalities of React Native, you are making a lifelong decision.

There are millions of React Native developers, and we’ve gone all out to know why they all love the framework;

1. The Ability to Create Native-Like Experience

The birth of React Native was at a Facebook Hackathon in 2013. Officially announced in 2015 at the Facebook React Conference. It was to correct a mistake made by Facebook by pitching its tent with HTML5. There’s a reason React Native was built;

“Creating Native like experience on both mobile and tablet with a level of consistency on multiple operating systems.

With Facebook achieving this ultimate goal through React Native, they dumped HTML5.

2. Developer Efficiency Across All Platforms

It does not matter the platform you care about, React Native will bring out the shine. As a programming framework, you can bring about real life experiences on both iOS and Android platforms.

It requires a single developer to build a native experience for both platforms without the need for either Java/Kotlin or Objective-C/Swift.

With a single codebase, the developer can focus on delivering an amazing user experience.

3. Instant Reload, Fast Refresh, and Plays Well With Modern Debugging Tools

Right from your ability to use your preferred text editors to avoiding IDE that you do not like, there’s a lot React Native has on offer. Whether your own choice is visual studio code or vim, then stick with it.

Not forgetting that Fast Refresh is enabled by default. Remember that there’s Chrome or Safari’s developer tools also, which you can also use.

Just make changes to your app from within it, and you can see the changes in seconds.

4. The Flexibility of React Native

One aspect of React Native that has increased people’s love is the ability to code natively outside of React Native. You are allowed to work on platform-specific codes.

Imagine being able to compile a native iOS app with React Native. Still, the features are programmed in either Swift or Objective-C. Whatever you cannot achieve using React Native, you can employ other frameworks to accomplish the same.

In essence, React Native delivers a frustration-free experience due to its flexibility. From the first look, this might appear trivial until there’s a need for it arises.

5. Existence of a Thriving and Active Community

React Native has grown over the years, and with it has come a thriving community of passionate developers. As of February 2019, React Native has over 2,200 developers contributing to its codebase on Github.

In a 2019 survey conducted by Stack Overflow, developers voted React Js as the most loved framework. It’s one of the foundational elements of React Native,

Moreso, the React Native developer community is growing, and this is one of the strengths of the framework.

Final Thoughts

Today, the React Native framework’s quality is being attested to by its utilization by the world’s biggest tech companies.

Finally, there’s rarely any developer out there that is not impressed by the framework. It’s one that many love, and we hope you’ll tend to love it soon if you don’t already.