►
From YouTube: Getting started with ReactNative Sheena O'Connell
Description
Everybody wants an app. And many people want at least two - one for Android and one for ios. Needless to say, this gets expensive. Enter ReactNative (and friends).
These days there are quite a few different ways to build a cross platform application. In this talk I'll compare and contrast a few different cross-platform mobile development tools and techniques. The plan here is to give you a non-biased view of that landscape and tell you a little bit about when ReactNative would be a good choice.
This talk was recorded at the Jozi.JS meetup group on 31 October 2019.
https://www.meetup.com/Jozi-JS/events/264749460/
Disclaimer: The opinions in this talk are those of the individual and do not necessarily represent those of this channel, the meetup group, or its sponsors.
A
Hey
everyone.
Am
I
loud
enough?
No
am
I
loud
enough
crap,
damn
I,
don't
know
if
I
can
sustain
this
spit
I'll
try
for
you,
alright,
so
I'm
gonna
be
talking
to
you
guys
about
react
native
and
my
experiences
with
it
how
to
get
started
and
definitely
way
not
to
get
started
so
once
upon
a
time,
I
needed
a
mobile,
app
and
okay.
So
a
friend
of
mine
needed
a
mobile
app
and
so
I
figured
I'd
help
out
and
this
neat
is
this
app
needed
a
couple
of
different
things.
A
Firstly,
it
needed
to
wake
up
like
an
alarm
clock,
so
it
needed
to
kind
of
like
this.
The
whole
screen
needed
to
be
awake,
the
app
needed
to
open
up
they
had
to
be
widgets
and
noises
and
nonsense,
and
that
isn't
something
that
you
can
do
from
something
like
a
web,
app
I
needed
native
functionality.
So
on
Android
there's
this
thing
called
the
Android
alarm
manager
and
it
was
just
a
requirement,
and
so
and
on
top
of
that,
like
I
really
arrived,
like
react,
I
think
it's
fun
and
powerful.
A
A
So
what
is
react
native
react
native
is
one
of
a
plethora
of
different
tool
sets
that
you
can
use
for
cross-platform
application
development.
So
if
you're,
if
you're
making
an
app
for
some
users,
it's
going
to
have
a
face,
where's
it
going
to
live,
maybe
it's
an
Android
app
or
an
iOS
app
or
it
runs
on
a
Windows
Phone
or
it's
a
web
app
and
or
it's
a
desktop
app
like
it's.
A
number
of
different
things,
so
react
native
is
like
it's
very
good
at
these
things
at
the
top.
It's
kind
of
okay
at
those.
A
It
makes
use
of
a
native
visual
layer.
So
that
means
it
uses
native
components.
So
your
your
battens
on
react
native.
If
you're
running
it
on
Android,
it's
a
it's
a
native
Android
button
that
looks
like
an
Android
button.
It
feels
like
Android
if
you
ran
it
on
on
an
Apple
device,
it
feels
like
Apple,
and
so
that's
quite
nice
and
depending
on
your
circumstances,
there
are
pros
and
cons
to
this.
Of
course,
the
pros
are
that
it
feels
like.
Like
the
native
thing.
The
cons
are
that
it's
not
really
that
configurable
like.
A
A
Gonna,
ignore
that
no
yeah
native
components.
It
also
can't
do
some
really
simple
things
like
if
you
just
wanted
to
show
an
SVG.
You
can't
like
it's
not
that
easy.
You
need
to
jump
through
some
hoops
to
do
these
simple,
visual
things,
but
then,
but
then
you
can
execute
JavaScript.
So
pretty
much
your
JavaScript
executes
on
the
device
and
your
JavaScript
calls
the
native
component
and
the
native
stuff,
and
that's
wonderful,
so
some
people
would
say
this
must
be
hellishly
slow
and
it's
usually
just
in
time
compiled.
A
So
it's
not
actually
that
slow
and
except
sometimes
on
Apple
devices,
gets
weird.
It
was
created
by
the
Facebook.
Its
initial
release
was
quite
some
time
ago,
but
his
first
stable
release
was
just
a
month
ago.
So
it's
still
like
it's
being
used
by
industry
in
a
big
way
like
there's
a
lot
of
a
lot
of
big
companies
using
it,
but
like
a
month
ago
it
was
considered
stable.
So
that
means
it's
got
room
to
grow
right.
A
So
I
wanted
to
give
you
guys
a
balanced
view
of
react
native
in
the
landscape
of
other
kind
of
cross-platform
mobile
development
platforms,
because
even
though
it
seemed
like
the
right
choice
for
me,
maybe
it's
not
the
right
choice
for
you.
Maybe
you
freaking
hate
react
it's
possible,
it's
weird,
but
it's
accept
you.
If
you're
Mike.
A
So
react
native
versus
just
native,
so
one
trade
off
you
can
make
is
Ike.
Instead
of
doing
a
react
native
application,
you
can
just
use
plain
old
native
code,
so
Android
users,
Swift
of
sorry,
IRS
uses
Swift
or
objective-c.
If
you're
old-school
and
on
the
Android
side
you
have
Kotlin
or
Java
if
you're
old-school.
So
it's
cool
because
you
can
make
something
really
fast,
but
your
dev
team
is
much
much
slower
and
you
have
like
double
code.
Double
the
the
bug
list.
Double
the
dev
team,
double
the
pizza,
it's
problematic!
You
want
to
avoid
that.
A
So
it
seems
that
industry
as
a
whole
is
moving
away
from
this
unless
I've
got
legacy
applications
just
from
the
asking
around
that
I've
done
so,
but
you
could
end
up
with
something
blazingly
fast
which
which
might
be
what
you
need.
The
next
thing
I
want
to
talk
about
is
flutter.
So
flattered
is
kind
of
also
a
new
kid
on
the
block
very
popular
created
by
Google,
which
is
nice
like
they
do
some
very,
very
cool
things.
It's
visual
layer
is
not
native,
so
it
draws
a
picture
and
makes
a
picture.
A
Interactive
and
dashes
are
things
so
for
me
it
doesn't
make
sense
because
I
didn't
have
time
to
learn
and
I
wanted
to
use
matrix.
So
that's
that
one
worth
looking
into,
if
you
don't
know,
react
and
then
there's
this
other
thing
called
xamarin,
which
is
a
bit
more
old
school
Microsoft
made
it
it's
compiled
into
something
that
is
very,
very
native.
So
it's
pretty
cool.
It's
pretty
fast.
It's
not
net.
If
you
have
that
capability.
A
Then
there's
pwace
who's,
who
knows
little
PWA,
is
okay,
cool,
that's
good!
That's
good!
All
right!
So
walks
like
a
nap
quacks
like
a
nap,
but
it's
a
website.
So
basically
you
can
make
a
website
and
then
effectively
tell
the
device
that
this
website
should
act
like
an
app
and
then
it
looks
like
an
app
and
you
can
put
a
shortcut
to
it
on
your
home
screen
and
life
is
good.
A
The
problem,
though,
is
that
it's
is
in
fact
a
website,
so
you
can
only
access
certain
functionality
and
a
lot
of
the
time
it's
enough
and
if
I
could
have
used.
One
of
these
instead
of
react,
native
and
I
probably
would
have
gone
that
way,
because
it's
much
nicer
to
work
with
you
couldn't,
for
example,
use
the
alarm
manager
from
a
PWA.
A
It
does
allow
you
to
access
a
background
service,
though
so
it
means
you
do
have
access
to
native
functionality,
which
is
pretty
cool,
but
in
every
other
way
it's
just
like
a
clever
website
and
then
there's
AI
ionic,
so
ionic
I
didn't
even
consider
it
at
the
beginning,
because
I
was
like
you
angular.
Sorry,
sorry,
like
I,
just
didn't,
enjoy
angular
and
I
haven't
used
it
for
a
long
time
and
I
found
react
more
fun
and
I
heard
these
bad
things
about
web
views
being
slow.
A
So
how
could
overworked
was
knuckled
over
how
ionic
worked
was
that
it
had
the
sinkhole
cordova
which
acted
as
a
layer
between
whatever's
what
you
used
to
interact
with
the
native
functionality,
and
then
you
have
a
web
view
that
the
draws
out
your
application.
So
it's
kind
of
like
a
website
within
a
native
app
and
it
seemed
kind
of
cranky
and
weird
to
me.
So
I
stayed
away
from
it
and
people
say
Cordova's
hard
to
work
with,
like
I
just
haven't
heard
a
lot
of
good
things
about
it.
A
I'll
get
to
that
later.
The
bias
so
actually
getting
started
with
react
native
is
quite
easy.
Well,
there's
an
easy
way
and
a
hard
way
like
in
a
lot
of
things.
The
easy
ways
was
this
thing
called
Expo
right,
so
how
many
of
you
have
used
react
before
awesome?
Okay,
so
you
know
like
create
react
app
and
then
you
just
like
you
just
run
it
and
it
just
works.
That's
wonderful!
A
So
you
can
do
a
similar
thing
with
Expo,
so
you
just
install
it
and
then
you,
you
initialize
a
project
and
then
you
start
it
and
it
takes
those
four
lines
of
code.
To
start
your
your
react
native
project,
which
is
wonderful,
so
I'm
going
to
attempt
to
demo.
It
didn't
work
the
last
time.
I
did
it,
but
let's
see
what
happens.
Okay
for
science.
A
A
A
Cool,
oh
no,
ok,
I've
run
out
of
space
on
my
hard
drive
you
guys
this
is
terrible
and
my
right
click
doesn't
work.
Oh
gosh,
alright!
So
now
it's
starting
life
is
good.
It's
over
here.
So
when
you
start
your
pride,
when
you
start
your
application,
its
picks
up
on
the
side
here
and
then
it
finally
shows
you
a
little
QR
code,
which
is
wonderful.
Then
you
download
this
thing
called
Expo
on
your
phone
and
so
I'm.
A
Just
opening
expert
app
looks
like
that
great
then
I'm,
gonna
click
on
button,
I'm
gonna
tell
it
to
scan
a
QR
code.
Gonna
scan
that
thing,
and
now
my
application
is
beginning.
You
can
see.
There's
like
this
little
count
happening
at
the
bottom
here,
takes
for
freaking
ever
we're
waiting,
we're
waiting.
It's
probably
my
main
quark
now
I
know
it's
one
of
my
main
qualms
with
Expo
is
that
it
just
takes
a
really
really
really
long
time,
while
it's
busy
what
oh,
no
it
broke
in
a
fantastic
way.
A
That's
another
one
of
my
columns
with
with
expo
is
that
it
kind
of
comes
up
with
these
really
obscure
error
messages.
It
doesn't
look
like
react
anymore.
I
think
this
is
a
hard
drive
thing.
Ok,
demo
gods
have
failed
me
again,
but
it's
ok.
So
what
I
wanted
to
demonstrate?
There
was
mostly
the
slowness
of
expo
so
basically
like
whenever
you
make
a
change
to
your
code,
it
does
library
load
on
your
phone,
which
is
really
nice,
but
it
takes
like
30
seconds.
A
Sometimes
you
just
like
make
this
little
change
in
the
mic,
and
it's
not
peasant.
So
you
end
up
having
to
install
some
extra
staff
to
make
it
work
and
that's
okay,
but
it's
kind
of
a
pain
in
the
neck
to
do,
especially
if
you're
used
to
diving
with
react
in
a
specific
way.
So
usually,
when
you
dev
with
react,
you
have
like
a
web
browser
and
you
have
the
developer
tools
and
you
have
like
cool
plugins
that
you've
installed
to
make
this
this
easy.
A
Now
you
don't
have
any
of
that
anymore,
because
all
that
happens
when
you,
when
you
start
your
Expo
project,
is
you
get
that
cool
page
with
like
the
QR
code
on
it,
and
it
doesn't
give
you
a
lot
and
so
I
found
that
quite
frustrating.
The
other
thing
that
I
found
quite
frustrating
yeah.
The
other
thing
I
found
quite
frustrating,
was
the
error
messages
so
basically
like
reactor
error.
A
Messages
usually
make
quite
a
lot
of
sense
comparatively,
but
how
expo
works
or
how
react
native
works
is
like
lots
of
native
stuff
and
then
like
a
little
bit
of
react.
And
then,
if
your
react
breaks
like
the
native
stuff
kind
of
complaints,
and
it's
not
always
immediately
clear
like
what
you
should
do
in
where
you
should
go
for
help,
and
sometimes
it's
just
very,
very
obscure
mr.
dev
tools
a
lot
and
you
need
a
you-
need
a
device
or
an
emulator.
A
A
So
basically,
I
wanted
to
give
a
balanced
opinion
of
react.
Native
versus
its
competitors
and
I
was
like.
Okay,
fine,
like
I,
know,
I,
don't
like
angular,
but
lots
of
people
do
lemme
research,
this
ionic
thing
and
get
more
into
it
and
just
like
let
people
make
their
own
choice
instead
of
saying
like
eat
my
opinions,
people
so
so,
then
there
was
a
twist
I
only
got
like
a
serious
seriously.
Remakes
like
I
got
rewritten
completely,
which
is
cool
so
now
so
ionic
4
is
out.
It's
really
really.
A
A
So
we're
going
to
be
talking
about
getting
react
to
work
on
native,
as
opposed
to
react
native
now
so
yeah,
so
basically,
ionic
4
is
really
cool
because
it's
it's
been
dubbed
ionic
for
everyone
right,
so
what's
cool
about
it
is
that
it's
not
tied
to
angular
anymore.
It
used
to
be
like
super
glue
together.
Now
it's
just
super
glued
to
standard
like
web
stuff,
so
it
works
with
yes.
A
So
it's
just
it's
all
about
web
components,
which
is
great
because
it
means
that
you're
not
you're,
not
tied
to
any
one
framework
and
as
new
frameworks
come
out,
you
should
be
able
to
just
use
them
without
much
of
a
problem.
So
right
now
it
supports
angular
like
of
course,
but
it
also
supports
react
in
a
nice
way
and
it
supports
of
you
as
well
and
supports
this
old,
regular
JavaScript.
If
you
hate
all
of
those
things,
it'll
probably
support
other
like
like.
A
So
that's
where
the
documentation
goes,
but
you
can
do
whatever
you
need
and
that's
really
really
cool.
The
other
thing
that's
cool
about.
It
is
if
you
get
this
thing
to
run,
it
runs
in
a
browser
as
well
as
on
your
phone
and
that's
quite
nice,
because
it
means
that
you
have
access
to
all
the
dev
tools
that
you
used
to,
and
so
you
can,
you
can
develop
as
rapidly
as
you
would
with
a
regular
react
application
because
it
just
updates
in
the
browser.
A
So
that's
very
nice
and
then
the
other
thing
I
noticed
so
I
made
like
a
little
hello
world
react
native
app
and
then
I
made
a
little
hello.
All
ionic
app
and
I
made
some
apks
from
each
of
them.
I
was
like:
how
big
are
they
and
this
is
it
like?
Ionic
was
way
way
smaller.
It's
like
6.12
megabytes
versus
47,
which
is
insane
so
like
with
Arnie
I,
think
it
sends
a
shift.
A
Yeah
like
I
was
told
it
would
be
big,
but
it's
not
big,
like
one
of
the
cons
of
ionic
is
supposed
to
be
that
as
big,
but
it's
like
so
much
smaller
than
react
native.
So
alright,
that's
pretty
awesome,
especially
if
you're
diving
in
South
Africa,
like
people
often
don't
have
great
phones
and
great
connections.
So
I
think
it's
a
better
choice
or
they
run
out
of
hard
drive
space
like
yo
new
crap.
So
embarrassing,
don't
tell
anyone
promise
me,
then
the
other
thing
is
the
other
thing
is
so
there's
this
thing
so
called
over.
A
There
was
a
thing
for
a
long
time
and
they've
created
this
new
thing
called
capacitor,
which
is
it
takes
all
the
lessons
of
Cordova
and
make
something
that's
a
lot
more
developer-friendly
and
so
could
over
like
it
does
the
job,
but
people
don't
make
plug-ins
for
it.
So
much
because
it's
not
like
it's
not
easy
to
do.
It's
not
a
friendly
platform,
whereas
capacitors
designed
with
like
dev
friendliness
in
mind
from
day
one
which
is
really
really
nice
and
it's
compatible
with
with
your
Cordova
stuff.
A
So
that's
cool,
so
it
should
be
like
quite
a
smooth
transition.
If
you
wanted
to
move
from
cord
over
to
capacitor
in
theory,
so
that's
nice
and
it's
also
ridiculously
easy
to
get
started
so
three
lines
of
code
I
might
have
more
space
now
because
I
deleted
stuff,
we
could
try,
let's
give
it
a
shot
for
science.
A
A
So
this
is
just
like
the
the
stock
standard
application
and
it
seems
to
be
out
of
memory.
So
let's
not
worry
about
it,
but
basically
this
is
what
you
do
and
then
it
acts
like
that
acts
like
react,
so
it
opens
up
by
default
and
then
you
can
go
over
here
and
you
can
change
some
stuff
and
you
can
say
hi
there,
Josie
Jess
and
save
that
go
back
here
and
it's
like
it's
quick,
like
it
sorts
itself
out
quickly
with
Expo
you'd
have
to
wait
for
freaking
ages.
A
A
So
then
I
was
like
so
I
was
like
okay
cool.
So
this
is
awesome.
Let
me
give
a
a
balanced
view.
Right
and
I
couldn't
really
find
a
reason
to
use
react
native
instead
of
ionic
as
much
as
I
searched.
I
tried
hard,
but
it
seems
like
it's
a
better
choice
because
it's
faster
because
it's
easier
to
get
started.
The
the
sizes
are
smaller,
it's
just
more
approachable,
and
so
that's
that's
quite
nice.
Some
people
might
disagree.
I
think.
Are
they
react
native
people
in
the
room?
Awesome?
A
Are
there?
Are
they
ionic
for
people
in
the
room?
No
other
react
native
people
going
to
try
on
ik.
No,
but
the
hell.
It's
so
much
faster.
You
guys
and
it's
tiny
and
so
like
react
native
is,
is
learn
once
run
anywhere
right,
whereas
this
is
right
once
around
anyway.
So
once
you've
got
your
code
base,
it
works
in
the
browser.
Fine,
it
works
on
like
devices
as
well,
so
it'll
work
on
your
Android
and
your
iOS
and
whatever
you
can
use
electron
and
make
it
into
a
desktop
app.
A
So
it
works
in
all
the
places,
the
same
code
to
to
an
extent.
If
you
go
to
native
with
it
there,
not
so
much,
but
I
mean
that's
freaking
cool,
so
you
don't
need
to
adapt
too
much.
So
now,
I
was
like
alright.
So
if
I
wanted
to
start
again
from
scratch,
what
what's
the
future
of
this
thing?
So
I
mean
the
technologies
come
and
go,
and
everybody
has
heard
of
JavaScript
fatigue,
who
hasn't
who
hasn't?
A
Okay,
so,
like
the
stuff
changes
every
five
minutes,
and
it's
quite
like
tough
to
to
keep
up
sometimes
so
you
want
to
use
something
that
has
a
future,
and
so
what
this
is
just
Google,
Trends
right,
so
I
didn't
do
anything
too
in-depth
to
come
up
with
my
new
biased
opinions,
but
this
is
I
think
a
good
start.
So
this
blue
line
at
the
top
here
is
react
right
and
then
view
is
like
slightly
below
react.
Sometimes
it
actually
overtakes
react
in
searches.
A
So
that's
kind
of
interesting
and
then
angular's
half
that
like
consistently
about
half
as
searched
as
react
native,
and
to
me
it's
like
the
more
awesome.
Something
is
the
more
people
will
search
for
it.
Most
of
the
time
I
mean
everybody
has
heard
of
react,
everybody
who
well
not
everybody,
but
you
know
this
like
these
people
I've
heard
of
react,
heard
of
angular
heard
of
you,
but
everybody
is
looking
up,
react
and
and
view,
but
not
as
many
people
angular.
A
A
It
looks
like
that,
so
we
have
react
and
we
have
ionic
up
here
and
we
have
react
native
down
there,
because
it's
only
been
stable
for
five
minutes
and
it's
not
a
great
experience,
whereas
ionic
has
been
stable
for
a
long
time
and
it's
a
great
experience.
The
problem
is
that
it
runs
angular
which
isn't
that
popular,
so
I
think
what's
going
to
happen
is
because
angular's
like
because
react
popular
and
our
Onix
popular,
like
it's
going
to
be
more
popular
and
react.
Natives
like
going
to
lose
ground.
A
It's
already
doesn't
have
a
lot
of
ground.
So
that's
that's
just
my
thought,
yeah
and
that's
it.
So
let
me
introduce
myself
I
do
this
at
the
end,
just
because
of
life,
so
my
name
is
Gina
and
I
work
for
Busey
and
we
are
hiring
techies.
So
basically
we
are
a.
We
teach
people
how
to
code,
and
so
here's
some
resources
for
those
of
you
who
wanna
learn
how
to
use
react
on
ionic
for
the
sliders
on
the
interwebs,
so
you
can
download
it
and
that's
the
end
of
my
presentation,
yeah
so.