Alternatives to React Native logo

Alternatives to React Native

Flutter, Swift, Xamarin, NativeScript, and React are the most popular alternatives and competitors to React Native.
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What is React Native and what are its top alternatives?

React Native is a popular open-source mobile application framework developed by Facebook that allows developers to build cross-platform apps using JavaScript and React. It offers hot reloading, reusable components, and a large community of developers. However, React Native has limitations such as slower performance compared to native apps, limited access to certain native features, and issues with version compatibility.

  1. Flutter: Flutter is a UI toolkit developed by Google that enables developers to create natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase. Key features include hot reload, expressive and flexible UI, and a rich set of pre-built widgets. Pros of Flutter include fast performance, customizable UI, and a declarative programming paradigm, while cons include a larger app size and a steeper learning curve compared to React Native.

  2. Xamarin: Xamarin is a Microsoft-owned framework for building cross-platform apps using C# and .NET. Key features include code sharing across platforms, native API integration, and access to platform-specific APIs. Pros of Xamarin include strong performance, advanced debugging tools, and seamless integration with Visual Studio, while cons include a high licensing cost and limited community support compared to React Native.

  3. Ionic: Ionic is an open-source SDK for building cross-platform mobile, desktop, and progressive web apps using web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Key features include Ionic CLI for development, Angular integration, and Cordova plugins for native functionality. Pros of Ionic include easy learning curve, broad platform support, and a robust ecosystem of plugins, while cons include performance issues on older devices and limitations in handling complex animations.

  4. NativeScript: NativeScript is an open-source framework for building truly native mobile applications using JavaScript, TypeScript, or Angular. Key features include direct access to native APIs, Angular and Vue.js support, and hot module replacement. Pros of NativeScript include high performance, direct access to native APIs, and code sharing across platforms, while cons include a smaller community and learning curve compared to React Native.

  5. PhoneGap: PhoneGap, also known as Apache Cordova, is an open-source framework for building mobile applications using web technologies. Key features include easy integration with third-party libraries, access to native device features, and a large plugin ecosystem. Pros of PhoneGap include rapid development, support for multiple platforms, and compatibility with web technologies, while cons include slower performance compared to native apps and limited access to some native features.

  6. jQuery Mobile: jQuery Mobile is a touch-optimized web framework for building mobile apps using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Key features include a lightweight structure, theming tools, and a responsive design. Pros of jQuery Mobile include wide browser compatibility, easy integration with other frameworks, and a large community, while cons include limited support for modern features and a less modern codebase compared to React Native.

  7. Appcelerator Titanium: Appcelerator Titanium is a cross-platform development framework that enables developers to build native mobile applications using JavaScript, Alloy MVC framework, and Titanium APIs. Key features include rapid development, code reusability, and access to native APIs. Pros of Appcelerator Titanium include native performance, easy integration with existing codebases, and a large collection of APIs, while cons include a smaller community and a limited number of pre-built components compared to React Native.

  8. Sencha Ext JS: Sencha Ext JS is a comprehensive JavaScript framework for building data-intensive web applications and cross-platform mobile apps. Key features include extensive UI components, robust data management solutions, and support for MVVM architecture. Pros of Sencha Ext JS include powerful data visualization tools, seamless data integration, and a modern component library, while cons include a higher learning curve and a focus on enterprise-level applications compared to React Native.

  9. Corona SDK: Corona SDK is a cross-platform framework for building 2D games and applications using Lua. Key features include high-speed development, real-time simulation, and the Corona Marketplace for plugins and assets. Pros of Corona SDK include excellent 2D graphics support, fast development cycle, and a large developer community, while cons include limited support for complex 3D features and less flexibility compared to React Native.

  10. Kotlin Multiplatform: Kotlin Multiplatform is a modern programming language developed by JetBrains that allows developers to share code across multiple platforms including Android, iOS, and web. Key features include interoperability with existing Java codebases, support for asynchronous programming, and a powerful standard library. Pros of Kotlin Multiplatform include seamless integration with Android Studio, strong performance, and type safety, while cons include a smaller community and limited support for complex UI designs compared to React Native.

Top Alternatives to React Native

  • Flutter
    Flutter

    Flutter is a mobile app SDK to help developers and designers build modern mobile apps for iOS and Android. ...

  • Swift
    Swift

    Writing code is interactive and fun, the syntax is concise yet expressive, and apps run lightning-fast. Swift is ready for your next iOS and OS X project — or for addition into your current app — because Swift code works side-by-side with Objective-C. ...

  • Xamarin
    Xamarin

    Xamarin’s Mono-based products enable .NET developers to use their existing code, libraries and tools (including Visual Studio*), as well as skills in .NET and the C# programming language, to create mobile applications for the industry’s most widely-used mobile devices, including Android-based smartphones and tablets, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. ...

  • NativeScript
    NativeScript

    NativeScript enables developers to build native apps for iOS, Android and Windows Universal while sharing the application code across the platforms. When building the application UI, developers use our libraries, which abstract the differences between the native platforms. ...

  • React
    React

    Lots of people use React as the V in MVC. Since React makes no assumptions about the rest of your technology stack, it's easy to try it out on a small feature in an existing project. ...

  • Electron
    Electron

    With Electron, creating a desktop application for your company or idea is easy. Initially developed for GitHub's Atom editor, Electron has since been used to create applications by companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Slack, and Docker. The Electron framework lets you write cross-platform desktop applications using JavaScript, HTML and CSS. It is based on io.js and Chromium and is used in the Atom editor. ...

  • React Navigation
    React Navigation

    Start quickly with built-in navigators that deliver a seamless out-of-the box experience. Navigation views that deliver 60fps animations, and utilize native components to deliver a great look and feel. ...

  • Ionic
    Ionic

    Free and open source, Ionic offers a library of mobile and desktop-optimized HTML, CSS and JS components for building highly interactive apps. Use with Angular, React, Vue, or plain JavaScript. ...

React Native alternatives & related posts

Flutter logo

Flutter

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Cross-platform mobile framework from Google
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PROS OF FLUTTER
  • 143
    Hot Reload
  • 123
    Cross platform
  • 105
    Performance
  • 89
    Backed by Google
  • 73
    Compiled into Native Code
  • 61
    Fast Development
  • 58
    Open Source
  • 53
    Fast Prototyping
  • 49
    Single Codebase
  • 48
    Expressive and Flexible UI
  • 36
    Reactive Programming
  • 34
    Material Design
  • 30
    Dart
  • 29
    Widget-based
  • 26
    Target to Fuchsia
  • 20
    IOS + Android
  • 17
    Easy to learn
  • 16
    Great CLI Support
  • 14
    You can use it as mobile, web, Server development
  • 14
    Tooling
  • 13
    Debugging quickly
  • 13
    Have built-in Material theme
  • 12
    Target to Android
  • 12
    Good docs & sample code
  • 12
    Community
  • 11
    Support by multiple IDE: Android Studio, VS Code, XCode
  • 10
    Written by Dart, which is easy to read code
  • 10
    Easy Testing Support
  • 9
    Target to iOS
  • 9
    Real platform free framework of the future
  • 9
    Have built-in Cupertino theme
  • 8
    Easy to Widget Test
  • 8
    Easy to Unit Test
  • 1
    Large Community
CONS OF FLUTTER
  • 29
    Need to learn Dart
  • 11
    Lack of community support
  • 10
    No 3D Graphics Engine Support
  • 8
    Graphics programming
  • 6
    Lack of friendly documentation
  • 2
    Lack of promotion
  • 1
    Https://iphtechnologies.com/difference-between-flutter

related Flutter posts

Vaibhav Taunk
Team Lead at Technovert · | 31 upvotes · 4.2M views

I am starting to become a full-stack developer, by choosing and learning .NET Core for API Development, Angular CLI / React for UI Development, MongoDB for database, as it a NoSQL DB and Flutter / React Native for Mobile App Development. Using Postman, Markdown and Visual Studio Code for development.

See more

The only two programming languages I know are Python and Dart, I fall in love with Dart when I learned about the type safeness, ease of refactoring, and the help of the IDE. I have an idea for an app, a simple app, but I need SEO and server rendering, and I also want it to be available on all platforms. I can't use Flutter or Dart anymore because of that. I have been searching and looks like there is no way to avoid learning HTML and CSS for this. I want to use Supabase as BASS, at the moment I think that I have two options if I want to learn the least amount of things because of my lack of time available:

  1. Quasar Framework: They claim that I can do all the things I need, but I have to use JavaScript, and I am going to have all those bugs with a type-safe programming language avoidable. I guess I can use TypeScript?, but that means learning both, and I am not sure if I will be able to use 100% Typescript. Besides Vue.js, Node.js, etc.

  2. Blazor and .NET: There is MAUI with razor bindings in .Net now, and also a Blazor server. And as far as I can see, the transition from Dart to C# will be easy. I guess that I have to learn some Javascript here and there, but I have to less things I guess, am I wrong? But Blazor is a new technology, Vue is widely used.

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Swift logo

Swift

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13.4K
1.3K
An innovative new programming language for Cocoa and Cocoa Touch.
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PROS OF SWIFT
  • 259
    Ios
  • 180
    Elegant
  • 126
    Not Objective-C
  • 107
    Backed by apple
  • 93
    Type inference
  • 61
    Generics
  • 54
    Playgrounds
  • 49
    Semicolon free
  • 38
    OSX
  • 36
    Tuples offer compound variables
  • 24
    Clean Syntax
  • 24
    Easy to learn
  • 22
    Open Source
  • 21
    Beautiful Code
  • 20
    Functional
  • 12
    Dynamic
  • 12
    Linux
  • 11
    Protocol-oriented programming
  • 10
    Promotes safe, readable code
  • 9
    No S-l-o-w JVM
  • 8
    Explicit optionals
  • 7
    Storyboard designer
  • 6
    Optionals
  • 6
    Type safety
  • 5
    Super addicting language, great people, open, elegant
  • 5
    Best UI concept
  • 4
    Its friendly
  • 4
    Highly Readable codes
  • 4
    Fail-safe
  • 4
    Powerful
  • 4
    Faster and looks better
  • 4
    Swift is faster than Objective-C
  • 4
    Feels like a better C++
  • 3
    Easy to learn and work
  • 3
    Much more fun
  • 3
    Protocol extensions
  • 3
    Native
  • 3
    Its fun and damn fast
  • 3
    Strong Type safety
  • 3
    Easy to Maintain
  • 2
    Protocol as type
  • 2
    All Cons C# and Java Swift Already has
  • 2
    Esay
  • 2
    MacOS
  • 2
    Type Safe
  • 2
    Protocol oriented programming
  • 1
    Can interface with C easily
  • 1
    Actually don't have to own a mac
  • 1
    Free from Memory Leak
  • 1
    Swift is easier to understand for non-iOS developers.
  • 1
    Numbers with underbar
  • 1
    Optional chain
  • 1
    Great for Multi-Threaded Programming
  • 1
    Runs Python 8 times faster
  • 1
    Objec
CONS OF SWIFT
  • 6
    Must own a mac
  • 2
    Memory leaks are not uncommon
  • 1
    Very irritatingly picky about things that’s
  • 1
    Complicated process for exporting modules
  • 1
    Its classes compile to roughly 300 lines of assembly
  • 1
    Is a lot more effort than lua to make simple functions
  • 0
    Overly complex options makes it easy to create bad code

related Swift posts

Shivam Bhargava
AVP - Business at VAYUZ Technologies Pvt. Ltd. · | 22 upvotes · 867.3K views

Hi Community! Trust everyone is keeping safe. I am exploring the idea of building a #Neobank (App) with end-to-end banking capabilities. In the process of exploring this space, I have come across multiple Apps (N26, Revolut, Monese, etc) and explored their stacks in detail. The confusion remains to be the Backend Tech to be used?

What would you go with considering all of the languages such as Node.js Java Rails Python are suggested by some person or the other. As a general trend, I have noticed the usage of Node with React on the front or Node with a combination of Kotlin and Swift. Please suggest what would be the right approach!

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Conor Myhrvold
Tech Brand Mgr, Office of CTO at Uber · | 13 upvotes · 2.1M views

Excerpts from how we developed (and subsequently open sourced) Uber's cross-platform mobile architecture framework, RIBs , going from Objective-C to Swift in the process for iOS: https://github.com/uber/RIBs

Uber’s new application architecture (RIBs) extensively uses protocols to keep its various components decoupled and testable. We used this architecture for the first time in our new rider application and moved our primary language from Objective-C to Swift. Since Swift is a very static language, unit testing became problematic. Dynamic languages have good frameworks to build test mocks, stubs, or stand-ins by dynamically creating or modifying existing concrete classes.

Needless to say, we were not very excited about the additional complexity of manually writing and maintaining mock implementations for each of our thousands of protocols.

The information required to generate mock classes already exists in the Swift protocol. For Uber’s use case, we set out to create tooling that would let engineers automatically generate test mocks for any protocol they wanted by simply annotating them.

The iOS codebase for our rider application alone incorporates around 1,500 of these generated mocks. Without our code generation tool, all of these would have to be written and maintained by hand, which would have made testing much more time-intensive. Auto-generated mocks have contributed a lot to the unit test coverage that we have today.

We built these code generation tools ourselves for a number of reasons, including that there weren’t many open source tools available at the time we started our effort. Today, there are some great open source tools to generate resource accessors, like SwiftGen. And Sourcery can help you with generic code generation needs:

https://eng.uber.com/code-generation/ https://eng.uber.com/driver-app-ribs-architecture/

(GitHub : https://github.com/uber/RIBs )

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Xamarin logo

Xamarin

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785
Create iOS, Android and Mac apps in C#
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PROS OF XAMARIN
  • 121
    Power of c# on mobile devices
  • 81
    Native performance
  • 79
    Native apps with native ui controls
  • 73
    No javascript - truely compiled code
  • 67
    Sharing more than 90% of code over all platforms
  • 45
    Ability to leverage visual studio
  • 44
    Mvvm pattern
  • 44
    Many great c# libraries
  • 36
    Amazing support
  • 34
    Powerful platform for .net developers
  • 19
    GUI Native look and Feel
  • 16
    Nuget package manager
  • 12
    Free
  • 9
    Backed by Microsoft
  • 9
    Enables code reuse on server
  • 8
    Faster Development
  • 7
    Use of third-party .NET libraries
  • 7
    It's free since Apr 2016
  • 7
    Best performance than other cross-platform
  • 7
    Easy Debug and Trace
  • 7
    Open Source
  • 6
    Mac IDE (Xamarin Studio)
  • 6
    Xamarin.forms is the best, it's amazing
  • 5
    That just work for every scenario
  • 5
    C# mult paradigm language
  • 5
    Power of C#, no javascript, visual studio
  • 4
    Great docs
  • 4
    Compatible to develop Hybrid apps
  • 4
    Microsoft stack
  • 4
    Microsoft backed
  • 3
    Well Designed
  • 3
    Small learning curve for Mobile developers
  • 2
    Ionic
  • 2
    Ability to leverage legacy C and C++
CONS OF XAMARIN
  • 9
    Build times
  • 5
    Visual Studio
  • 4
    Price
  • 3
    Complexity
  • 3
    Scalability
  • 2
    Nuget
  • 2
    Maturity
  • 2
    Build Tools
  • 2
    Support
  • 0
    Maturidade
  • 0
    Performance

related Xamarin posts

Greg Neumann
Indie, Solo, Developer · | 8 upvotes · 1.6M views

Finding the most effective dev stack for a solo developer. Over the past year, I've been looking at many tech stacks that would be 'best' for me, as a solo, indie, developer to deliver a desktop app (Windows & Mac) plus mobile - iOS mainly. Initially, Xamarin started to stand-out. Using .NET Core as the run-time, Xamarin as the native API provider and Xamarin Forms for the UI seemed to solve all issues. But, the cracks soon started to appear. Xamarin Forms is mobile only; the Windows incarnation is different. There is no Mac UI solution (you have to code it natively in Mac OS Storyboard. I was also worried how Xamarin Forms , if I was to use it, was going to cope, in future, with Apple's new SwiftUI and Google's new Fuchsia.

This plethora of techs for the UI-layer made me reach for the safer waters of using Web-techs for the UI. Lovely! Consistency everywhere (well, mostly). But that consistency evaporates when platform issues are addressed. There are so many web frameworks!

But, I made a simple decision. It's just me...I am clever, but there is no army of coders here. And I have big plans for a business app. How could just 1 developer go-on to deploy a decent app to Windows, iPhone, iPad & Mac OS? I remembered earlier days when I've used Microsoft's ASP.NET to scaffold - generate - loads of Code for a web-app that I needed for several charities that I worked with. What 'generators' exist that do a lot of the platform-specific rubbish, allow the necessary customisation of such platform integration and provide a decent UI?

I've placed my colours to the Quasar Framework mast. Oh dear, that means Electron desktop apps doesn't it? Well, Ive had enough of loads of Developers saying that "the menus won't look native" or "it uses too much RAM" and so on. I've been using non-native UI-wrapped apps for ages - the date picker in Outlook on iOS is way better than the native date-picker and I'd been using it for years without getting hot under the collar about it. Developers do get so hung-up on things that busy Users hardly notice; don't you think?. As to the RAM usage issue; that's a bit true. But Users only really notice when an app uses so much RAM that the machine starts to page-out. Electron contributes towards that horizon but does not cause it. My Users will be business-users after all. Somewhat decent machines.

Looking forward to all that lovely Vue.js around my TypeScript and all those really, really, b e a u t I f u l UI controls of Quasar Framework . Still not sure that 1 dev can deliver all that... but I'm up for trying...

See more
Bhupendra Madhu
Web Developer at Ecombooks · | 8 upvotes · 706K views

I want to learn cross-platform application frameworks like React Native, Flutter, Xamarin, or Ionic, and I'm a web developer. I can learn other programming languages as well. But I'm confused about what to learn, which framework is best, and which framework will last long as the application grows further into complexity.

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NativeScript logo

NativeScript

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516
Build truly native apps with JavaScript
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+ 1
516
PROS OF NATIVESCRIPT
  • 75
    Access to the entire native api
  • 47
    Support for native ios and android libraries
  • 46
    Support for javascript libraries
  • 46
    Angular 2.0 support
  • 44
    Native ux and performance
  • 37
    Typescript support
  • 35
    Backed up by google and telerik
  • 29
    Css support
  • 27
    Cross-platform declarative ui and code
  • 25
    Fully open source under apache 2.0 license
  • 11
    Vuejs support
  • 9
    60fps performance
  • 6
    Powerful data visualization with native UI
  • 5
    VS Code integration
  • 5
    Angular, typescript and javascript support
  • 5
    No need for Mac to build iOS apps in Telerik Platform
  • 4
    Extended CLI support
  • 4
    Cloud builds as part of Telerik PLatform
  • 4
    Truly Object-Oriented with Typescript
  • 4
    On-device debugging
  • 4
    Extensibility
  • 3
    Access to entire native api
  • 3
    Live reload
  • 3
    Easiest of all other frameworks
  • 3
    Easy to learn
  • 3
    Backed by google
  • 3
    0 day support for new OS updates
  • 3
    Publishing modules to NPM
  • 2
    Vue.js support out of the box
  • 2
    VueJS support
  • 2
    Svelte support
  • 2
    Powerfull mobile services as part of Telerik Platform
  • 2
    Native ui with angular
  • 2
    Vue support
  • 1
    Playground
  • 1
    Hot Reload
  • 1
    HMR via webpack
  • 1
    Very small app size
  • 1
    Write once, use anywhere
  • 1
    Easy to use, support for almost all npm packages
  • 1
    Rich ecosystem
  • 1
    Compile to Apple/Google Stores via CloudCompiler
  • 1
    Has CSS ;-)
  • 1
    It works with Angular
  • 1
    Code reuse with your website
  • 0
    Dart
CONS OF NATIVESCRIPT
  • 5
    Lack of promotion
  • 1
    Slower Performance compared to competitors

related NativeScript posts

Hello,

We're just brainstorming for the moment and we have a few questions.

We have an idea for an app that we want to develop, here are the prerequisites:

1) cross-platform (iOS, Android, and website);

2) as easy to maintain as possible / well documented / widely used;

3) Visual Studio Code and Copilot compatible;

4) Text to speech;

5) Speech recognition;

6) Running in background (screen off with TTS and speech recognition);

7) could be using TypeScript;

8) Monetized through ad and in-App payment for premium version;

9) Display on lock screen (Android only I guess)

So what would you recommend?

I've been trying to review the options available, and I've considered:

  • NativeScript

  • React Native

  • Flutter

  • Any other?

Thanks in advance for your help, and I'm open to any comments.

See more
leonardo silveira
Software Engineer at Jobsity · | 5 upvotes · 562.8K views

So, i am preparing to adopt NativeScript.

For years my hybrid projects used Apache Cordova.

"Let's avoid to maintain two teams and double the deliver velocity".

It was good for a few years, we had those september issues, (i.e. apple broke some backward compatibility) , but for the last years, things seems to be losing the grip faster.

Last breaking changes, for instance, seems to have a workaround, however that growing feeling that simple things can not rely on so fragile webviews keeps growing faster and faster.

I've tested nativescript not only on it's "helloworld", but also on how do they respond on issues.

I got tweed support. I opened an github issue and got answers on less than 10 hours (yes i did it on another timezone and very close to a weekend). I saw the faulty docs get corrected in two days.

The bad news is i only can adopt nativescript on newer projects, since there is no budget to revamp the current solutions.

The good news is i can keep coding on Vue.js , without vou router, but that's ok. I've already exchanged vanilla html for real native app with background magic enabled, the router can be easily reproduced.

See more
React logo

React

172.6K
142.5K
4.1K
A JavaScript library for building user interfaces
172.6K
142.5K
+ 1
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PROS OF REACT
  • 832
    Components
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    Virtual dom
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    Performance
  • 508
    Simplicity
  • 442
    Composable
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    Data flow
  • 166
    Declarative
  • 128
    Isn't an mvc framework
  • 120
    Reactive updates
  • 115
    Explicit app state
  • 50
    JSX
  • 29
    Learn once, write everywhere
  • 22
    Easy to Use
  • 21
    Uni-directional data flow
  • 17
    Works great with Flux Architecture
  • 11
    Great perfomance
  • 10
    Javascript
  • 9
    Built by Facebook
  • 8
    TypeScript support
  • 6
    Server Side Rendering
  • 6
    Speed
  • 5
    Feels like the 90s
  • 5
    Excellent Documentation
  • 5
    Props
  • 5
    Functional
  • 5
    Easy as Lego
  • 5
    Closer to standard JavaScript and HTML than others
  • 5
    Cross-platform
  • 5
    Easy to start
  • 5
    Hooks
  • 5
    Awesome
  • 5
    Scalable
  • 4
    Super easy
  • 4
    Allows creating single page applications
  • 4
    Server side views
  • 4
    Sdfsdfsdf
  • 4
    Start simple
  • 4
    Strong Community
  • 4
    Fancy third party tools
  • 4
    Scales super well
  • 3
    Has arrow functions
  • 3
    Beautiful and Neat Component Management
  • 3
    Just the View of MVC
  • 3
    Simple, easy to reason about and makes you productive
  • 3
    Fast evolving
  • 3
    SSR
  • 3
    Great migration pathway for older systems
  • 3
    Rich ecosystem
  • 3
    Simple
  • 3
    Has functional components
  • 3
    Every decision architecture wise makes sense
  • 3
    Very gentle learning curve
  • 2
    Split your UI into components with one true state
  • 2
    Image upload
  • 2
    Permissively-licensed
  • 2
    Fragments
  • 2
    Sharable
  • 2
    Recharts
  • 2
    HTML-like
  • 1
    React hooks
  • 1
    Datatables
CONS OF REACT
  • 41
    Requires discipline to keep architecture organized
  • 30
    No predefined way to structure your app
  • 29
    Need to be familiar with lots of third party packages
  • 13
    JSX
  • 10
    Not enterprise friendly
  • 6
    One-way binding only
  • 3
    State consistency with backend neglected
  • 3
    Bad Documentation
  • 2
    Error boundary is needed
  • 2
    Paradigms change too fast

related React posts

Johnny Bell

I was building a personal project that I needed to store items in a real time database. I am more comfortable with my Frontend skills than my backend so I didn't want to spend time building out anything in Ruby or Go.

I stumbled on Firebase by #Google, and it was really all I needed. It had realtime data, an area for storing file uploads and best of all for the amount of data I needed it was free!

I built out my application using tools I was familiar with, React for the framework, Redux.js to manage my state across components, and styled-components for the styling.

Now as this was a project I was just working on in my free time for fun I didn't really want to pay for hosting. I did some research and I found Netlify. I had actually seen them at #ReactRally the year before and deployed a Gatsby site to Netlify already.

Netlify was very easy to setup and link to my GitHub account you select a repo and pretty much with very little configuration you have a live site that will deploy every time you push to master.

With the selection of these tools I was able to build out my application, connect it to a realtime database, and deploy to a live environment all with $0 spent.

If you're looking to build out a small app I suggest giving these tools a go as you can get your idea out into the real world for absolutely no cost.

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Collins Ogbuzuru
Front-end dev at Evolve credit · | 37 upvotes · 237.9K views

Your tech stack is solid for building a real-time messaging project.

React and React Native are excellent choices for the frontend, especially if you want to have both web and mobile versions of your application share code.

ExpressJS is an unopinionated framework that affords you the flexibility to use it's features at your term, which is a good start. However, I would recommend you explore Sails.js as well. Sails.js is built on top of Express.js and it provides additional features out of the box, especially the Websocket integration that your project requires.

Don't forget to set up Graphql codegen, this would improve your dev experience (Add Typescript, if you can too).

I don't know much about databases but you might want to consider using NO-SQL. I used Firebase real-time db and aws dynamo db on a few of my personal projects and I love they're easy to work with and offer more flexibility for a chat application.

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Electron logo

Electron

11.3K
9.9K
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Build cross platform desktop apps with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS
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PROS OF ELECTRON
  • 69
    Easy to make rich cross platform desktop applications
  • 53
    Open source
  • 14
    Great looking apps such as Slack and Visual Studio Code
  • 8
    Because it's cross platform
  • 4
    Use Node.js in the Main Process
CONS OF ELECTRON
  • 19
    Uses a lot of memory
  • 8
    User experience never as good as a native app
  • 4
    No proper documentation
  • 4
    Does not native
  • 1
    Each app needs to install a new chromium + nodejs
  • 1
    Wrong reference for dom inspection

related Electron posts

Paul Whittemore
Developer and Owner at Appurist Software · | 15 upvotes · 1.1M views

I'm building most projects using: Server: either Fastify (all projects going forward) or ExpressJS on Node.js (existing, previously) on the server side, and Client app: either Vuetify (currently) or Quasar Framework (going forward) on Vue.js with vuex on Electron for the UI to deliver both web-based and desktop applications for multiple platforms.

The direct support for Android and iOS in Quasar Framework will make it my go-to client UI platform for any new client-side or web work. On the server, I'll probably use Fastly for all my server work, unless I get into Go more in the future.

Update: The mobile support in Quasar is not a sufficiently compelling reason to move me from Vuetify. I have decided to stick with Vuetify for a UI for Vue, as it is richer in components and enables a really great-looking professional result. For mobile platforms, I will just use Cordova to wrap the Vue+Vuetify app for mobile, and Electron to wrap it for desktop platforms.

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Vue.js vuex Vue Router Quasar Framework Electron Node.js npm Yarn Git GitHub Netlify My tech stack that helps me develop quickly and efficiently. Wouldn't want it any other way.

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React Navigation logo

React Navigation

1.1K
344
1
Flexible navigation library for React Native and web. Learn once, navigate anywhere.
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PROS OF REACT NAVIGATION
  • 1
    Easy to use
CONS OF REACT NAVIGATION
    Be the first to leave a con

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    Ionic logo

    Ionic

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    8.5K
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    A beautiful front-end framework for developing cross-platform apps with web technologies like Angular and React.
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    PROS OF IONIC
    • 248
      Allows for rapid prototyping
    • 228
      Hybrid mobile
    • 208
      It's angularjs
    • 186
      Free
    • 179
      It's javascript, html, and css
    • 109
      Ui and theming
    • 78
      Great designs
    • 74
      Mv* pattern
    • 71
      Reuse frontend devs on mobile
    • 65
      Extensibility
    • 31
      Great community
    • 29
      Open source
    • 23
      Responsive design
    • 21
      Good cli
    • 14
      So easy to use
    • 13
      Angularjs-based
    • 13
      Beautifully designed
    • 12
      Widgets
    • 11
      Allows for rapid prototyping, hybrid mobile
    • 11
      Typescript
    • 10
      Quick prototyping, amazing community
    • 10
      Easy setup
    • 8
      Angular2 support
    • 7
      Fast, easy, free
    • 7
      Because of the productivity and easy for development
    • 7
      Base on angular
    • 7
      So much thought behind what developers actually need
    • 6
      Super fast, their dev team is amazingly passionate
    • 6
      Easy to use
    • 6
      It's Angular
    • 4
      UI is awesome
    • 4
      Hot deploy
    • 3
      Material design support using theme
    • 3
      Amazing support
    • 3
      It's the future
    • 3
      Angular
    • 3
      Allow for rapid prototyping
    • 3
      Easy setup, development and testing
    • 3
      Ionic creator
    • 2
      User Friendly
    • 2
      It's angular js
    • 2
      Complete package
    • 2
      Simple & Fast
    • 2
      Fastest growing mobile app framework
    • 2
      Best Support and Community
    • 2
      Material Design By Default
    • 2
      Cross platform
    • 2
      Documentation
    • 2
      Because I can use my existing web devloper skills
    • 2
      Removes 300ms delay in mobile browsers
    • 1
      Responsive
    • 1
      Native access
    • 1
      Typescript support
    • 1
      Ionic conect codeigniter
    • 1
      Fast Prototyping
    • 1
      All Trending Stack
    CONS OF IONIC
    • 20
      Not suitable for high performance or UI intensive apps
    • 15
      Not meant for game development
    • 2
      Not a native app

    related Ionic posts

    Fernando Albertengo

    I'm currently doing some research to build a full cross-platform system that our personnel will use for various management and selling purposes, this is just a first step to migrate (and clean, lots of cleaning) a gigantic and obsolete system made in Java 7 with a nightmarish coupling between logic and view layers.

    Since the system itself is considerably large, we are currently migrating the essential modules of its logic to an ExpressJS driven Restful API.

    As a complementary project, I must find a way to share the highest possible amount of view code while achieving said cross-platform capacity.

    My approach is the following:

    • Angular 7+ and Ionic 5 for Android and iOS.
    • Angular 7+ for the web.
    • Angular 7+ and Electron for Desktop.

    While Angular is the common part, and considering that Ionic can work on any platform, i'm wondering what is the best way to achieve a non-conflicting integration of Electron.js to the very-commonly-used Angular+Ionic Stack for both Mobile and Web development?

    I've stumbled with a quite good template build called Polyonic but I would love to hear more about the matter before taking such a long-lasting decision.

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    Bhupendra Madhu
    Web Developer at Ecombooks · | 8 upvotes · 706K views

    I want to learn cross-platform application frameworks like React Native, Flutter, Xamarin, or Ionic, and I'm a web developer. I can learn other programming languages as well. But I'm confused about what to learn, which framework is best, and which framework will last long as the application grows further into complexity.

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